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Creamed Meat

A sauce of butter, flour, onion, celery or parsley, and milk served over cooked meat, optionally with peas and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Creamed Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet.

  2. Stir in the flour, chopped onion, and celery or parsley.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring over heat until it forms a sauce.

Add the meat

  1. Cut the cooked meat into small pieces and add to the sauce.

  2. For extra flavor, add canned peas and mushrooms.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Peas + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and creaminess.
Cooked meat
Provides the main protein that the sauce is built around.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring over heat. Adding milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

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