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A Breakfast Dish

Thin slices of cold roast beef are simmered in a walnut catsup and mustard gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place thin slices of cold roast beef in a tin saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix melted butter, walnut catsup, vinegar, salt, pepper, currant jelly, prepared mustard, and enough warm water to create a gravy.

  3. Pour the gravy over the beef slices.

Steam

  1. Cover the saucepan tightly and set it in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Steam for 30 minutes, ensuring the water in the outer pot remains at a hard boil.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef
Provides the meat that is gently heated and tenderised in the gravy.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy, carrying flavour and a smooth mouthfeel.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and cuts the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Keep the outer pot at a hard boil. Steam only heats the beef gently if the water keeps boiling. If the water drops, the saucepan cools and the beef heats unevenly, so the gravy may not stay hot through the full 30 minutes.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, walnut, vinegar, pepper, mustard):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, walnut, vinegar, pepper, mustard. 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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