Skip to main content
Main

Cold Beef or Mutton with Poached Eggs

Cold beef or mutton served with poached eggs and optional gravy or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Cold Beef or Mutton with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the beef or mutton into slices of equal thickness.

  2. Broil the slices over a clear fire until slightly brown.

  3. Keep the meat hot on a dish.

Serve

  1. Poach the eggs and lay them around the meat.

  2. Add a few drops of escalot wine or vinegar, or your favorite gravy or sauce.

  3. Serve with mashed potatoes if desired.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Wine + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Beef + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  4. Beef + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,650 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin of beef or leg of mutton
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat being broiled and served.
Eggs
Poached and laid around the meat as the rich, soft-textured garnish of the dish.
Escalot wine or vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the meat and eggs.

The step that matters

Broil the slices until slightly brown. Browning the surface through high heat builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, but over-browning dries the meat, so the slices should only take on light colour.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, wine, sauce):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, wine, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes