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Spoon-meat

Spoon-Meat is a Welsh dish of boiled cornmeal mush, cooled, sliced, and fried with butter, onions, sage, parsley, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Spoon-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Boil the cornmeal with enough water to make a mush.

  2. Pour the mush into a deep dish and let it cool.

  3. Once solid, turn it out upside down.

Fry and serve

  1. Slice and fry in butter, adding fried onions, sage, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. For a Welsh rabbit, place a slice in a cheese-toaster and top with cheese.

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. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Cornmeal
Cooks into a mush that sets firm as it cools, giving the slices their structure.
Butter
Fat for frying the slices, adding richness and browning on the surface.
Fried onions
Adds sweetness and savory aroma to the fried slices.

The step that matters

Let the mush cool until fully solid before turning it out. As the cornmeal mush cools, its starch sets and firms. If it is turned out before it is solid, the slices may break or crumble when they are fried.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sage, 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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