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 ↓
Hashed Cold Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Stew the bones in a little water with the onion, salt, pepper, and savory herbs if desired.
Once the flavor is extracted, thicken the gravy with corn starch.
If the gravy is weak, add a bit of butter.
Place the stewpan on the hot hearth and add the slices of cold meat.
Warm the meat gently without boiling.
Serve with toasted bread.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Onion + corntop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,205 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, corn, butter, meat, bread):
- Capsicumfits better
- Potatofits better
- Tomatofits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, corn, butter, meat, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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