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Meat Patties

A simple patty made from tinned meat, butter, pepper, salt, and allspice, formed and chilled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Meat Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all gristle and skin from the meat.

  2. Season the meat with salt, pepper, and allspice.

Pound and pot

  1. Place the meat in a mortar and pound it well, adding butter gradually until smooth.

  2. Transfer the mixture into small pots, pressing it down tightly.

  3. Pour clarified butter over the top.

  4. Let it sit for about 30 minutes before serving.

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Meat + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Tinned meat
Forms the body of the patties; pounding breaks it into a smooth, spreadable mass.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps bind the pounded meat into a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat smooth while adding butter gradually. Adding butter slowly lets it emulsify into the meat fibres. Adding it all at once can leave the paste greasy and uneven, so the texture will not set smooth and firm.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, 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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