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Cold Meat Kedgeree

Cold Meat Kedgeree is a chilled dish of cooked rice, meat, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cold Meat Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the rice as for curry.

  2. Coarsely chop the whites of the hard-boiled eggs and keep warm.

  3. Rub the yolks through a wire sieve and set aside.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and lightly fry the shallot or onion.

  2. Add the meat and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.

  3. Stir in the rice, egg whites, a pinch of nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  4. Heat thoroughly while stirring.

Serve

  1. Arrange in a pyramid on a hot dish, garnish with egg yolks and parsley, and serve.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish.
Cooked rice
Forms the base of the dish, adding bulk and a light, separate texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Whites add soft body to the mixture, while sieved yolks give a rich, crumbly garnish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the fried aromatics.
Shallot or onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and savoury aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly while stirring. Cooked rice and meat can harbour bacteria if they are only warmed partly, so the mixture must be heated through evenly. Constant stirring prevents hot spots and scorching on the pan base.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, rice, egg, butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, rice, egg, butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper. 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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