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Cold Meat Mince

A loaf of finely chopped cooked meat mixed with bread, eggs, and seasonings, baked and served with a bone‑stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Meat Mince

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the cooked meat finely.

  2. Soak the bread in milk, then press out the milk.

  3. Beat the soaked bread with a fork and mix it with the meat.

  4. Add pepper and salt to taste.

  5. Beat one egg and mix it with the meat and bread mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a deep pudding dish and decorate the bottom and sides with small pieces of hard-boiled egg.

  2. Press the meat mixture into the dish.

  3. Bake for 1 hour, then gently turn it out.

  4. Make a sauce using the bones for stock.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked lean meat
Forms the main body of the loaf and gives it its savoury flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the loaf holds its shape when turned out.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and keeps the loaf tender.

The step that matters

Pressing the meat mixture into the dish. Packing the mixture firmly removes air pockets, so the loaf holds together when it is turned out after baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, bread, milk, carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, bread, milk, carrot, turnip, flour. 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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