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Bread and Meat Baked

A baked dish of sliced stale bread, raw meat, onions, and stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, and dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bread and Meat Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Grease a baking dish.

  2. Cut the bread very thinly and spread with dripping.

  3. Slice and season the meat.

Assemble and soak

  1. Layer the dish with bread, meat, and onions, finishing with bread on top.

  2. Pour the stock over the layers.

  3. Let it stand for 1 to 2 hours to soak.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 to 2 hours at 350°F (175°C), covering for most of the time and uncovering to brown the top.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 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

Stale bread
Forms the layers and soaks up stock to become soft and moist.
Raw meat
Provides the main filling, which cooks through slowly in the covered dish.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury flavour as they soften between the layers.
Dripping
Adds fat that helps the bread brown and gives richer flavour.
Water or plain stock
Supplies moisture that softens the bread and cooks the meat.

The step that matters

Uncovering to brown the top. Baking covered traps steam, keeping the layers moist. Removing the cover late lets surface moisture evaporate, so the bread can brown through dry heat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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