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Pickled Meat

A piece of meat marinated in vinegar, salt, peppercorns, cloves, onion, and bay leaves, then browned and simmered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,901 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Pickled Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Pickle

  1. Place the meat in a quart of vinegar seasoned with salt, peppercorns, cloves, sliced onion, and bay leaves.

  2. Leave to marinate for 3 to 4 days.

Cook and serve

  1. Remove the meat from the pickling liquid and brown it on both sides in butter.

  2. Pour the pickling liquid over the meat and boil slowly until tender. Optionally, add a little sugar.

  3. Serve with the gravy.

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. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow boiling.
Vinegar
Acidic pickling liquid that flavors the meat and helps tenderize it during marinating.
Butter
Adds fat and browning on the surface when the meat is fried.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the pickling liquid and helps draw flavor into the meat.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until tender. Boiling too hard can toughen and dry the meat fibers. A slow simmer lets connective tissue break down gradually, giving a tender result.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, vinegar, onion, butter, sugar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, vinegar, onion, butter, sugar. 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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