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Bread and Meat Baked

A baked dish of sliced stale bread, raw meat, onions, and stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bread and Meat Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Grease a baking dish.

  2. Cut the bread very thinly and spread it with dripping.

  3. Slice and season the meat.

Layer and soak

  1. Layer the dish with bread on top and bottom, and onions over the meat.

  2. Pour the stock over the layers.

  3. Let it stand for 1 to 2 hours to soak.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 to 2 hours at 350°F (175°C), covering for most of the time, then uncover to brown the surface.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the dish and soaks up stock to become tender.
Raw meat
Provides the savoury filling that cooks through during the long bake.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften between the meat layers.
Dripping
Adds fat that coats the bread, enriching flavour and helping it brown.
Water or plain stock
Moistens the layers so the bread softens and the dish stays juicy.

The step that matters

Uncovering to brown the surface. Covering keeps the dish moist while the meat cooks through; removing the cover lets surface heat dry the bread and drive browning reactions, so it must be done at the end.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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