Skip to main content
Main

Butcher Meat

A baked or stewed meat dish with cucumbers, eggs, and a gravy of wine, browning, mushroom ketchup, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Butcher Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Layer the meat with cucumbers and eggs, then roll it tightly.

Stew

  1. Bake or stew in a pot with ½ cup of water for four hours.

  2. Remove excess fat.

  3. Strain the gravy into a saucepan.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Add red wine, browning, mushroom ketchup, and juice of half a lemon.

  2. Thicken the gravy.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Serve the meat with gravy poured around it, garnished with force-meat balls and horseradish.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Red wine + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 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

Meat
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Eggs
Bind the layered filling so it holds together when rolled and cooked.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Browning
Gives the gravy a deeper brown colour.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Roll it tightly. A loose roll can open or let filling escape during the long stew, so the meat may cook unevenly and lose its shape. Tight rolling keeps the layers together and helps the roll hold its form while it cooks.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, cucumber, egg, red wine, mushroom, ketchup, horseradish):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, cucumber, egg, red wine, mushroom, ketchup, horseradish. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes