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Meat Loaf

A loaf of ground meat mixed with bread, onion, egg, pepper, and salt, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Meat Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the fresh cold meat finely, combining fat and lean.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and the finely chopped onion.

  3. Soak the bread in milk, then add it to the meat mixture.

  4. Stir everything together and beat in the egg.

Bake

  1. Bake until nicely brown.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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

Fresh cold meat
Provides the main body and richness, with fat adding juiciness as it cooks.
Bread soaked in milk
Adds moisture and a tender texture by keeping the meat from drying out and tightening.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds together when sliced after baking.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Combining the meat with the soaked bread and egg. Mixing too little or too much changes the texture. Overworking ground meat makes it dense and firm, while thorough, gentle mixing spreads the binder evenly so the loaf holds together and stays moist.

Swap the onion

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

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

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