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Sliced Beef, or Other Meat

Sliced beef or mutton served in a mustard and ketchup sauce with pickles and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sliced Beef, or Other Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the boiling stock and stir over heat until thick.

  3. Mix in the mustard, catsup, and pepper, and heat thoroughly without boiling.

Serve

  1. Add the slices of beef or mutton to the sauce and heat until hot.

  2. Serve garnished with pickles and croutons.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted fat that combines with flour to start the thickened sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, cohesive sauce when cooked with the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Beef or mutton
Provides the main meat, warmed through in the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce without boiling. Once the mustard and catsup are added, boiling can make the sauce separate or taste harsh, and the flour-thickened sauce can lose smoothness. Gentle heat keeps it cohesive and mellow.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, beef, bread. 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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