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Breakfast Dish

A baked casserole of chopped meat, boiled rice, milk, egg, and seasonings topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Breakfast Dish

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

  1. Moisten the chopped meat with gravy.

  2. Moisten the cold boiled rice with milk and mix in the egg.

  3. Season the rice mixture with pepper, salt, and butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Form a border of the rice mixture on a platter.

  2. Place the moistened meat in the center of the rice border.

  3. Scatter bread crumbs over the top.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the rice mixture so it holds its shape as a border.
Cold boiled rice
Forms the base of the casserole, giving it bulk and body.
Milk
Moistens the rice so it stays tender during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the rice mixture.
Cold meat
Provides the savory filling at the center of the dish.

The step that matters

Forming the rice border. The rice mixture must be packed firmly enough to hold its shape on the platter, since the egg sets as it heats and helps bind the border around the meat.

“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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