Skip to main content
Main

Chopped Cold Meat

A casserole of chopped cold meat mixed with rice, milk, egg, and seasonings, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Chopped Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Season the chopped cold meat.

  2. Wet the meat with gravy if convenient.

  3. Place the meat on a platter.

Make the rice mixture

  1. Combine cold rice with milk and the egg in a bowl.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and salt.

  3. If the mixture lacks rice, add powdered bread crumbs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the rice mixture thickly around the platter.

  2. Heat in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until heated through and browned.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

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

  5. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold rice
Forms the bulk of the topping, giving body that holds its shape when baked.
Egg
Binds the rice and milk together so the topping sets firm rather than loose.
Milk
Moistens the rice and softens it, keeping the topping from drying out in the oven.
Cold meat
Serves as the base filling, warmed through in the oven under the rice layer.

The step that matters

Spreading the rice mixture thickly. A thick layer of egg-bound rice insulates the meat and sets into a cohesive crust. A thin layer dries out or scorches before the meat is heated through.

“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