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Meat Omnium

A layered baked dish of minced meat, parsley, green onions, mushrooms, eggs, gravy, and bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Meat Omnium

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Mince all cooked meat very fine.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew-pan, combine minced meat, parsley, green onions, mushrooms, beaten eggs, and gravy or stock.

  2. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Layer and bake

  1. In a meat dish, layer the stew, then bread slices, and repeat until all ingredients are used.

  2. Heat in the oven until hot.

  3. Serve the hot stew over the layered bread.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its savoury flavour.
Eggs
Bind the minced mixture and help it set as it heats.
Gravy or stock
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the stew.
Bread slices
Soak up the stew and give the dish a soft, layered structure.

The step that matters

Simmering the stew with beaten eggs. If the stew boils hard after the eggs go in, they can scramble into small lumps instead of blending smoothly. A gentle simmer keeps the mixture uniformly tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, mushroom, egg, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, mushroom, egg, bread. 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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