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Warming Cold Meats

A method for reheating leftover cold meats with a butter‑flour sauce and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Warming Cold Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold meat into pieces.

  2. Season the meat with salt and pepper.

  3. In a saucepan, combine bones and bits of gristle with cold water and boil gently for 1–2 hours.

Make the gravy

  1. Heat butter or drippings until hot, then add flour and stir until rich brown.

  2. Add the broth and cook for 5 minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the meat and simmer until heated through.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cold meat
Is the main ingredient that is gently reheated in the sauce.
Butter or drippings
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the browned flour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy and, when browned, adds colour and nutty flavour.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and adds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred until it reaches a rich brown; cooking it too briefly leaves a raw, pasty taste, while cooking it too far turns it bitter. Stirring prevents scorching and lumps.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, flour, milk, pepper, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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