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Bread and Meat Baked

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

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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease a baking dish.

  3. Cut the bread very thinly and spread it with dripping.

  4. Slice and season the meat.

Assemble and soak

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

  2. Pour the stock over the layers and let it sit for 1 to 2 hours to soak.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the dish for three-quarters of the baking time.

  2. Uncover for the last part of the baking to brown the surface nicely.

  3. Bake for 1 to 2 hours, depending on the type of meat used.

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 that soak up the stock and set into a soft, bound texture.
Raw meat
Provides the main filling, cooking through in the moist layers as the dish bakes.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury flavour as they soften between the meat and bread.
Dripping
Adds fat that helps the bread brown and gives a richer flavour.
Water or plain stock
Moistens the bread and meat so the dish cooks through without drying out.

The step that matters

Cover, then uncover to brown. Covering traps steam so the meat cooks through gently and stays moist. Removing the cover for the final part of baking lets the surface dry and brown, which gives flavour and colour.

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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