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Minced Corned Beef

Boiled brisket of beef minced, seasoned, wrapped, boiled again, sliced thinly and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Minced Corned Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the beef

  1. Boil the brisket of beef for five to six hours.

Add the dressing

  1. Make a dressing with pepper, coarse sea salt, sweet herbs, mace, chopped onion, and egg.

  2. Put the dressing between the fat and lean of the beef and sew it up tightly.

Wrap and cook

  1. Flour a cloth and wrap the beef tightly in it.

  2. Boil the wrapped beef for five to six hours.

  3. Remove the cloth and press the beef until it cools.

Serve

  1. Slice thinly and serve cold.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and, with long boiling, becomes tender enough to slice.
Egg
Binds the seasoned dressing together so it holds its place inside the meat.
Flour
Dusts the cloth so the beef is held snugly and the cloth releases cleanly after cooking.
Onion
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the dressing spread through the beef.

The step that matters

Wrap the beef tightly and press it while cooling. A tight wrap and pressing as it cools help the meat hold a compact shape, so the slices stay neat rather than crumbling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, onion, egg, flour. 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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