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Cold Meat En Persillade

Cold meat topped with butter, parsley, shallots, gravy, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot 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 En Persillade

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Lay the sliced cold meat on a dish.

  2. Place small pieces of butter over the meat.

  3. Sprinkle with finely shredded parsley and shallots, and season with pepper.

  4. Moisten with a few tablespoons of good clear gravy.

  5. Top with a thick layer of rasped toast.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the dish in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve very hot on the same dish.

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 + shallottop 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. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Meat + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the base layer that heats through and becomes tender under the topping.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the toast brown and the meat stay juicy.
Gravy
Moistens the dish so the meat does not dry out while it heats.
Rasped toast
Forms a crisp, browned topping that contrasts with the soft meat below.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion aroma that mellows as the dish heats.

The step that matters

Top with a thick layer of rasped toast. A thick, even layer of crumbs protects the meat and moisture below while the top crisps and browns in the oven. Thin or patchy coverage lets the top dry out or burn in spots and leaves the meat exposed.

Swap the shallot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, parsley, 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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