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Cold Meat Cookery

Cold roast beef and bacon or ham are minced, mixed with herbs and eggs, formed into cakes, fried, and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Meat Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the beef very finely, preferably if it's underdone.

  2. Chop the bacon very small and mix it with the minced beef.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Stir in the minced herbs and bind the mixture with 1 or 2 eggs as needed.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small square cakes, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Fry the cakes in hot dripping until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Drain the cakes and serve them in a dish with good gravy poured around.

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

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

  2. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

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

  3. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  4. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

  5. 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

Cold roast beef
Forms the main body of the patties and gives the cakes their meaty flavour.
Bacon or ham
Adds fat and savoury flavour, keeping the patties moist as they cook.
Eggs
Bind the minced meat so the cakes hold their shape when formed and fried.
Savory herbs
Add aromatic flavour that brightens the savoury meat.

The step that matters

Binding with eggs. Eggs set when heated and hold the minced meat together. Adding too many makes the mixture wet and loose, while too few lets the cakes crumble in the hot dripping.

“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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