Skip to main content
Baking

Chopped Meat

A casserole of chopped round steak mixed with crackers, milk, eggs, butter, and seasoning, baked in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chopped Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Chop the round steak and suet together.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat with rolled crackers, sweet milk, eggs, butter, and seasoning, and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Place the mixture in a dish and set it in a pan half full of water.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the meaty body and savory flavor of the casserole.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it bakes.
Rolled crackers
Soak up the milk and give the casserole its structure and body.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softens the crackers as the casserole cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and rich during baking.

The step that matters

Setting the dish in a pan of water. The water bath moderates the oven heat around the dish, so the egg-based mixture cooks gently and stays tender rather than curdling or drying out at the edges.

“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.

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes