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Meat Loaf in Mob

A steamed loaf of minced meat mixed with cracker crumbs, milk, and egg, covered with rice and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Meat Loaf in Mob

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove skin, gristle, and bone from the left-over meat and mince it finely.

  2. Combine the minced meat with an equal quantity of cracker crumbs and season to taste.

  3. Moisten the mixture with milk and add 1 beaten egg for each pint of mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Line a mold with well-cooked rice.

  2. Fill the mold with the meat mixture, cover with rice, and steam for 1 hour.

  3. Turn out onto a platter and pour tomato sauce around it.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Left-over fowl or roast meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the loaf.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together as it steams.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and meat, keeping the loaf tender rather than dry.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it sets firm when steamed.
Well cooked rice
Forms a lining and cover that keeps the meat moist during steaming.

The step that matters

Fill the mold with the meat mixture, cover with rice, and steam for 1 hour.. Egg proteins set as the loaf heats, so the steaming must be gentle and sustained. Too little steam or too high a heat can leave the centre crumbly or the surface dry.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, milk, egg, rice, sauce):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, egg, rice, sauce. 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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