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French Side-dish

A baked French meat roll made with finely chopped beef or veal, suet or marrow, soaked bread, egg yolks, and butter.

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 ↓

French Side-dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Shape and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the beef or veal, suet or marrow, soaked bread, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Shape the mixture into a roll and place it in a tin pan.

  3. Dot the top with small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake in the oven, turning occasionally until cooked through.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + eggtop 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

Beef or veal
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the roll.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture so the roll holds its shape when cut.
Bread soaked in boiling water
Adds moisture that keeps the cooked meat tender.
Beef suet or marrow
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and richly flavored as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat on top that helps the surface brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Turning the roll while it bakes. Turning the roll during baking helps it cook evenly on all sides, so the outside does not dry or brown unevenly before the centre is cooked through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, egg, butter. 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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