Skip to main content
Main

Cold Meat

A platter of canned meat garnished with parsley, beetroot, pickles or salad, served with fried or mashed potatoes.

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

Why it works: Parsley and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Carefully open the tin and turn out the meat neatly.

  2. Remove any fat or dripping from the meat using a flat instrument.

Plate and garnish

  1. Garnish the meat with parsley and thinly sliced or cut beetroot.

  2. Alternatively, divide the meat into neat pieces and arrange in a circle on a dish.

  3. Fill the center with salad and pour a good mayonnaise sauce over it.

  4. Garnish with small piles of lettuce, hard‑boiled egg, and slices of beef.

Serve

  1. Serve with pickles or salad, and nicely fried or mashed potatoes.

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. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together330 recipes

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

  4. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,040 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

Meat
Forms the main body of the platter and provides the savoury centrepiece.
Potatoes
Fried or mashed, they add starch and bulk to balance the rich meat.
Mayonnaise (in the method)
Adds fat and creamy moisture to the salad and meat.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, potato):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, potato. 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 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes