Name: Cold Meat Cookeey
Ingredients: leftover cooked meat (beef, veal, chicken, etc.); coarse sea salt; vegetables (optional); herbs (optional); good quality stock or gravy

Why it works: Beef and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Cold Meat Cookeey

Ingredients

leftover cooked meat (beef, veal, chicken, etc.)
coarse sea salt
vegetables (optional)
herbs (optional)
good quality stock or gravy

Directions

Remove any gristle, skin, and fat from the meat.
Cut the usable meat into small pieces, about half-inch cubes.
Place bones, gristle, and any overcooked edges in a pan with cold water, vegetables, herbs, and seasoning.
Simmer gently to extract flavor and create stock for gravy.
Reheat the meat slowly in good quality stock or gravy, allowing time for flavors to blend.

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.

Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,148 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,533 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,243 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).