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Cold Meat Kedgeree

A cold dish of cooked 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 hard-boiled eggs coarsely and keep warm.

  3. Rub the yolks through a fine sieve.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and lightly fry the shallot or onion.

  2. Add the meat and cook for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Stir in the rice, chopped egg whites, a pinch of nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stir over heat until thoroughly hot.

Serve

  1. Arrange in a pyramid on a hot dish, garnish with egg yolks and parsley, and 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 rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the butter and seasoning as it heats.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body; the sieved yolks and chopped whites give contrasting texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, carrying the aroma of the shallot or onion through the dish.
Cooked meat
Provides savoury substance and protein, warmed through in the butter.
Shallot or onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until thoroughly hot. The rice and meat were already cooked, so the goal is heating them evenly through. Sufficient heat throughout reduces the risk of lukewarm pockets, while gentle stirring prevents the rice from scorching on the base of the pan.

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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