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Bread

Croctes of Meat

Croques of Meat are bread cakes filled with beef, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Croctes of Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Remove the crust and trim the bread into shape.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the bread until brown, then remove and keep hot.

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the flour in the butter, then add the gravy or water, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil, then remove from heat.

  3. When the sauce has cooled slightly, stir in the meat and heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Pile the mixture on the croques of bread and serve immediately.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Tinned beef
Provides the savoury meat filling that gives the croques their main flavour.
Stale bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the filling; stale bread fries well without going soggy.
Butter
Fat for frying the bread and browning the flour, adding richness and golden colour.
Flour
Browned in butter and mixed with the liquid, it thickens the sauce that binds the meat.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce gently after adding the flour and liquid. Flour thickens only as its starch gels in hot liquid, so the sauce must be brought to a boil and stirred smoothly to avoid lumps. Cooling slightly before adding the meat keeps the beef from toughening and drying.

“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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