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To Fry Meat

A simple fried meat dish with onions, flour, water, vinegar, and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Fry Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a pan on the fire for a minute and wipe it clean.

  2. When the pan is hot, add fat or butter.

Cook the meat

  1. Add the meat and turn it several times to cook evenly.

  2. Season with salt and pepper per pound of meat.

Make the sauce

  1. In the remaining fat, add onions and flour, then stir in water and vinegar.

  2. Optionally, add chopped pickles for extra flavor.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Meat
Is the main component that is cooked and browned in the hot fat.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a sauce as it cooks in the fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook down in the fat.
Chopped pickles
Add sharp, acidic flavor to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the fat. Flour must cook briefly in the fat before liquid is added. Stirring it into the hot fat coats the particles so they blend smoothly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, pepper, flour, vinegar. 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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