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Devilled Meat

A dish of sliced meat topped with a mustard, Worcestershire, ketchup, chili vinegar, cayenne, oil, lemon, butter, and claret sauce.

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. Cut the meat into slices and lay it on a dish.

  2. Make a sauce by mixing all the ingredients together.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the meat and set it in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for fifteen minutes, stirring 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat, fowl, or kidneys
Forms the main body of the dish, carrying the sauce as it heats.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the meat.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes savoury, tangy depth to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, helping the sauce cling to the meat.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour, thinning the sauce as it reduces in the oven.

The step that matters

Heating the sauced meat in the oven. Stirring frequently helps the meat heat evenly and keeps the sauce from scorching or drying on the surface. Cold meat only needs enough heat to warm through, so overcooking toughens it.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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