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Chopped Cold Meat

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 it with gravy if convenient.

  3. Place it on a platter.

Make the rice topping

  1. In a bowl, combine cold rice with milk and 1 egg.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. If the rice is insufficient, add powdered bread crumbs.

  4. Spread the rice mixture thickly around the platter.

Bake

  1. Place the platter in a 400°F (200°C) oven to heat and brown.

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 and gives the casserole body.
Egg
Binds the rice and milk so the topping sets firm when heated.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the rice mixture as it heats.
Powdered bread crumbs
Absorb extra moisture and help the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Spreading the rice mixture thickly. A thick, even layer of rice mixture insulates the meat below and lets the top heat and brown without drying out the meat. Thin spots can scorch or leave the layer undercooked.

“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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