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Delicious Breakfast Dish

A beef stew thickened with cornmeal, sliced and fried, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion 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 ↓

Delicious Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Boil the beef soup bone until the meat is tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bone and chop it finely, discarding gristle and small bits of bone.

  3. Season the chopped meat with salt, pepper, cayenne, and onions if desired.

  4. Return the chopped meat to the broth and boil again.

Make the mush

  1. Thicken the mixture with cornmeal until it reaches a mush-like consistency.

  2. Pour the mixture into a long, deep pan and let it cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut into slices and fry in butter until light brown.

  2. Serve hot, plain or with jelly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef soup bone
Provides the meat and broth that flavour the whole dish.
Cornmeal
Thickens the broth into a mush that sets when cooled and holds its shape.
Butter
Fat for frying the slices, adding richness and browning the surface.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornmeal to a mush-like consistency. Cornmeal swells and gelatinises as it cooks in liquid. Too little cooking leaves it runny and it will not set when cooled, while over-thickening makes it stiff. The mixture needs enough cornmeal and simmering time to firm up before it is poured and chilled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter. 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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