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Deviled Cold Meat

A fried mixture of diced cold meat, butter, stale bread crumbs, and dry mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Deviled Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the bread crumbs and fry until brown.

  3. Stir in the diced cold meat and dry mustard.

  4. Cook until heated 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

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

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the dish and supplies its savoury, meaty flavour.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the bread crumbs brown and crisp in the pan.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and brown, adding a toasted, crisp texture against the soft meat.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the meat and butter.

The step that matters

Fry the bread crumbs until brown. Bread crumbs brown through the Maillard reaction, which needs sustained heat and a dry surface. Stop too early and they stay pale and soft, with a flat, bready taste. Heat too hard and they scorch, leaving a bitter flavour.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, bread. 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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