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Cold Meat Boiled, with Poached Eggs

A dish of boiled meat served cold with poached eggs and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Boiled, with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat into even, equal thickness slices.

  2. Broil and brown the slices carefully over a clear fire or in a Dutch oven.

  3. Keep the less done slices warm in a dish by the fire.

Finish and serve

  1. Poach the eggs as directed in your preferred method.

  2. Serve the poached eggs over the warm meat with mashed potatoes.

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

Sirloin of beef or leg of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose even slices and browning give the dish its savory flavor.
Eggs
Poached eggs add a soft, runny yolk that enriches the warm meat when served over it.
Mashed potatoes
Provide a soft, starchy base that soaks up juices and balances the browned meat.

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.

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