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Browned Meat Shape

A steamed meat shape made with minced meat, suet, breadcrumbs, spices, eggs, and stock or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Browned Meat Shape

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a plain mold or basin and cover it thickly with browned breadcrumbs.

Make and steam the shape

  1. Mix together the minced meat, suet, nutmeg, salt, breadcrumbs, pepper, curry powder, powdered herbs, eggs, and enough stock or milk to combine.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold, cover with greased paper, and place in a pan with a little boiling water.

  3. Steam for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown sauce.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

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

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture so the shape holds together when turned out.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist during steaming.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the shape body and a soft texture.
Minced meat
Forms the main body of the shape and gives it its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Steaming the shape. Steam gently with the water kept at a simmer and the mold covered. Steam surrounds the mixture evenly, so it cooks through without drying out or turning rubbery at the edges.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, egg, milk. 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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