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Soup

Cold Meat Timbals

Cold meat timbals are a savory dish of diced cold meat simmered with milk, drippings, flour, onion, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Meat Timbals

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, heat the drippings and flour until it begins to brown.

  2. Add 1 cup of stock or hot water and 1-2 teaspoons of beef extract.

  3. Stir in the diced cold meat, onion, and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Simmer for one hour.

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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth sauce, with light browning adding flavour.
Drippings
Provide fat and meaty flavour for the base of the sauce.
Cold mutton or beef
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies the meaty flavour.
Beef extract
Adds concentrated savoury beef flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the drippings. Cooking the flour until it just begins to brown removes its raw taste and builds a nutty flavour. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching, which would make the sauce bitter and uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, pepper, beef, mutton):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, pepper, beef, mutton. 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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