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Croutes of Meat

Bread crusts topped with a seasoned beef mixture.

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 ↓

Croutes 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.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pile the meat mixture on the croutes 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

Beef
Provides the savoury meat filling that forms the topping of the croutons.
Stale bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the meat mixture.
Butter
Fat that browns the bread and carries the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Browned in the butter to thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Flour must be cooked until it smells nutty and lightly coloured before liquid is added. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and less body in the sauce.

“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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