Skip to main content
Main

Cold Meat, with Poached Eggs

Cold slices of beef or mutton served with poached eggs, potatoes, and greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Cold Meat, with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut slices of beef or mutton of equal thickness.

  2. Broil, fry, or brown the meat in an oven at 400°F (200°C).

  3. Keep the meat warm in a dish.

Cook the eggs and vegetables

  1. Poach the eggs.

  2. Mash or fry the potatoes and greens.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the vegetables on the dish, top with the meat, and garnish with poached eggs.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Egg + potatotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

  3. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Provides the main protein, and browning from broiling, frying or oven cooking adds savory flavor.
Eggs
Poached eggs add richness and a soft, runny yolk that moistens the dish when broken.
Potatoes
Mashed or fried, they add starch that gives body and a hearty texture to the plate.
Greens
Add fresh, slightly bitter flavor and color that balance the richness of the meat and eggs.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs. Eggs cooked in water that is too vigorously boiling can break apart and turn rubbery. Gentle simmering lets the whites set around the yolk while the yolk stays soft.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes