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Cold Meat Prepared As Brains

A patty made from cold meat, flour, milk, ginger, onion, and spices, fried in ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Meat Prepared As Brains

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Grind the cold meat to a fine paste in some hot water.

  2. Cook the milk and flour together until thick.

  3. Mix the ground meat paste with the flour paste.

  4. Add salt, pepper, ground ginger, and chopped onion.

  5. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

Coat and fry

  1. Brush the cutlets with beaten egg.

  2. Sprinkle the cutlets with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets in ghee until light brown.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main body of the cutlets, giving them bulk and a savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooked milk into a paste that binds the meat together.
Cow's milk
Cooked with the flour to make a thick paste that adds moisture and softness.
Egg
Beaten egg brushed on the outside helps bread crumbs stick and brown during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when the cutlets are fried.
Ghee
Fat for frying that browns the crumb coating and adds richness.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in ghee until light brown. Frying at a steady, moderate heat browns the bread crumb coating through the Maillard reaction while the inside heats through. Too high a heat scorches the crumbs before the centre is hot, and too low a heat leaves them greasy and pale.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, milk, egg, onion, bread, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, milk, egg, onion, bread, 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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