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Baked

A simple baked meat dish cooked with cold water, salt, pepper, butter, and covered with buttered paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the meat in a baking pan with ½ inch of cold water.

  3. Season the meat with salt, pepper, and a little butter.

  4. Cover the meat with a piece of buttered paper.

Bake and serve

  1. Baste the meat often to prevent burning.

  2. Ensure the bottom of the pan remains covered with juice; add more cold water if needed.

  3. Turn the meat over two or three times, keeping the paper on top.

  4. If the paper burns, replace it with another piece.

  5. Serve the meat like roasted beef.

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. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Is the main cooked component, becoming tender and juicy as it bakes slowly.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown gently under the paper.
Cold water
Forms juices in the pan that keep the meat moist and help prevent burning.

The step that matters

Keep the pan bottom covered with juice. Liquid in the pan keeps the meat moist and stops drippings from scorching. If the pan runs dry, the meat can dry out and burn, so add cold water when needed.

“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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