Skip to main content

Cold Boiled Beef, to Dress

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,823 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cold Boiled Beef, to Dress

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the boiled beef as thin as possible.

  2. Slice the onion or shallot and squeeze lemon juice over the beef.

  3. Beat the beef between two plates until well mixed and lemony.

  4. Place the beef in a serving dish, removing the onion.

  5. Sprinkle with parsley and bread crumbs.

  6. Mix oil and mustard, then pour over the beef.

  7. Garnish with sliced lemon.

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. Lemon + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Basil + laureltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lemon, basil, laurel, pepper, vinegar, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lemon, basil, laurel, pepper, vinegar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes