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Cold Meat Kedgeree

Cold meat kedgeree is a chilled dish of rice, meat, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cold Meat Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the rice as for curry.

  2. Chop the whites of the eggs coarsely.

  3. Keep the yolks warm after rubbing them through a wire sieve.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter or fat in a pan.

  2. Lightly fry the shallot or onion.

  3. Add the meat and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in the rice.

  5. Stir in the chopped egg whites and a pinch of nutmeg.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Heat thoroughly while stirring.

Serve

  1. Arrange the mixture in a pyramid on a hot dish.

  2. Garnish with egg yolks and parsley.

  3. Serve.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.
Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the butter and seasoning.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body through the chopped whites and rubbed yolks.
Butter or good fat
Carries the flavour of the shallot and spices and adds richness.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly while stirring. Stirring keeps the rice and meat from sticking and scorching on the pan base while the mixture heats evenly through, so the dish is hot all the way to the centre.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, rice, egg, butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, rice, egg, butter, parsley, nutmeg, 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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