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Devilled Meat

A sliced cold beef dish topped with a mustard, vinegar, oil, and sauce mixture, baked and served with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Devilled Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Slice the meat and lay it in a dish.

  2. Make a sauce by mixing the other ingredients.

  3. Pour the sauce over the meat.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes. Stir frequently.

  2. Serve with 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the base that the sauce coats and bakes into a savoury dish.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour, and moistens the sauce as it reduces.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang that help the sauce brown and caramelise slightly.
Worcester sauce
Adds savoury depth and salty, tangy flavour to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the sweetness of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps carry flavour through the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring during the bake. In a hot oven a thin sauce can scorch at the edges or dry out the meat. Stirring redistributes the sauce and keeps the surface moist and evenly coloured.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mustard, vinegar, butter, sauce, ketchup):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mustard, vinegar, butter, sauce, ketchup. 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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