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Cold Meat Cookery

A cold cooked meat chop served with fried potato slices, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Meat Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the chop and trim off any excess fat.

  2. Beat the chop slightly to soften the meat fibers.

  3. Parboil and dry the potatoes, then cut them into ½ inch thick slices.

Cook

  1. Melt the trimmed fat in a frying pan.

  2. Brown the chop quickly on both sides, then cook slowly for 5 to 7 minutes depending on thickness.

  3. Fry the potato slices beside the chop until light brown on both sides.

  4. Sprinkle the potatoes with pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve the chop on a hot plate, arranging the potatoes neatly around it.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 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

Cold cooked meat
Provides the main body of the dish; beating softens its fibers for a more tender bite.
Potatoes
Fry to a light brown crust outside while staying tender inside, adding contrast beside the meat.
Fat trimmed from the chop
Melted in the pan to fry the chop and potatoes, adding richness and browning.

The step that matters

Browning the chop then cooking it slowly. A quick sear on both sides builds browned flavor on the surface, and the slower cooking that follows heats the centre without drying the outside. Too high a heat throughout would toughen or scorch the meat before it is cooked through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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