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Cold Meat Kedgeree

A cold dish of cooked rice, meat, eggs, and butter, garnished with egg yolks and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cold Meat Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the rice as for curry.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

  3. Lightly fry the shallot or onion.

  4. Add the meat and cook it for a few minutes.

  5. Chop the whites of the hard-boiled eggs coarsely.

  6. Keep the yolks warm after rubbing them through a wire sieve.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir in the rice, chopped egg whites, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Heat thoroughly while stirring.

  3. Arrange the mixture in a pyramid shape on a hot dish.

  4. Garnish with the yolks of the eggs and parsley.

  5. Serve.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.
Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the butter and seasoning.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and texture through the chopped whites and the yolks used as garnish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the dish.
Shallot or onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness when lightly fried.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly while stirring. Cooked rice and meat can harbour bacteria, so they must be heated all the way through. Stirring evens out the heat and prevents scorching on the pan base.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, rice, egg, butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, rice, egg, butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper. 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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