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Warming Cold Meats

A sauce made from butter, flour, broth, and optional spices to warm cold meat pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Warming Cold Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold meat into nice pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the bones and bits of gristle in a saucepan with cold water and boil gently for 1 to 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons of butter or drippings.

  2. Fry 1 onion with the butter before adding the flour.

  3. Add 1 heaping tablespoon of dry flour to the hot butter and stir until it turns rich brown.

  4. Pour in 1 pint of the broth and cook for 5 minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  5. Add 1 teaspoon of curry powder.

  6. Add 1 cup of tomatoes.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the seasoned meat to the sauce and simmer until heated through.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Browned in fat, it thickens the broth into a sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flavour of the bones and gristle.
Butter or drippings
Carries the frying of the flour and onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Cold meat
The main protein, gently reheated in the sauce until warmed through.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be stirred in hot fat until it turns rich brown. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while scorching gives a bitter flavour and dark specks in the sauce.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, butter, flour, onion, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, flour, onion, milk. 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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