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Matelote Meat

A slow‑cooked stew of equal parts beef, veal, pork, mutton, and lamb with stock and champagne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Matelote Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the beef, veal, pork, mutton, and lamb in a saucepan.

  2. Add equal parts stock and champagne, along with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover the saucepan tightly and place it on hot ashes.

  4. Cook for six hours, then serve.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Pork + lambtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Mutton + lambtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef, veal, pork, and mutton
Provide the bulk of the meat, which breaks down into tender, rich pieces during long cooking.
Lamb
Adds more meat and fat, enriching the flavor and body of the stew.
Stock
Supplies liquid that gently cooks the meat and forms the base of the sauce.
Champagne
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity that brightens the rich meat flavors.

The step that matters

Keeping the pan tightly covered over gentle heat. A tight lid traps steam so the liquid stays at a steady simmer and the meat stays moist. Too much heat or an uncovered pan would reduce the liquid and toughen the meat before the collagen softens.

“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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