Skip to main content
Main

Meat Slices

Thin slices of roast or boiled meat simmered in a butter and flour gravy, optionally served with olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,263 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Meat Slices

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the meat slices in a saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle flour, butter, salt, and pepper over the meat.

  3. Pour water over the mixture.

  4. Cover and heat just enough to cook the gravy.

  5. Serve with warmed olives if desired.

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. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + olivetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Meat slices
Provide the main body of the dish, warmed gently in the gravy until heated through.
Flour
Thickens the water and butter into a light gravy that coats the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat only until the gravy cooks. Flour thickens when it is heated in liquid, but prolonged boiling can make the gravy thin or grainy and toughen the meat. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the slices tender.

“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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes