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Creamed Cold Meat

A dish of cold meat mixed with white sauce, optionally with diced boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and potato 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 ↓

Creamed Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the White Sauce according to your preferred recipe.

  2. Stir in the cold meat and cook until thoroughly heated.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. If desired, add the diced boiled potatoes and heat through.

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. Pepper + potatotop 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).

  4. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes
  5. Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.
White sauce
Binds the meat in a creamy coating and keeps it moist when reheated.

The step that matters

Heating the meat through. Cold meat already cooked must be heated until steaming hot throughout, since reheating only needs to bring it to a safe, uniform temperature. Stirring it into the sauce helps it heat evenly and prevents scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, 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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