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Pressed Meat

Pressed meat is shredded beef simmered with cloves, salt, and pepper, then pressed into a mold and refrigerated.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pressed Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Wash the beef plate thoroughly and place it in a kettle.

  2. Cover with boiling water to retain the juices and boil for 1 minute, then skim.

  3. Add a few whole cloves and simmer slowly until the meat is very tender and falls apart.

  4. Remove from the stove and let cool until manageable.

Prepare and press

  1. Take the meat from the liquid, removing the bone, gristle, and tough parts.

  2. Shred the meat into small pieces using your fingers.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Press the mixture into a mold and refrigerate overnight.

  5. Ensure the lean, fat, and liquid are in the right proportions for slicing.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef plate
Provides the meat that becomes tender and shreds into the pressed loaf.
Whole cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until very tender. Beef plate is a tough, connective-tissue-rich cut. Slow, gentle simmering converts collagen into gelatin, which makes the meat tender and helps the pressed mixture hold together when chilled. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and leave it dry.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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