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Beef Patties

Beef Patties are pan‑fried cakes made from chopped beef, potatoes, eggs, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Beef Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped beef and potatoes.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, milk, melted butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Mix until well combined.

Cook

  1. Form the mixture into cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes in a skillet until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the patties.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, helping the patties hold together and stay tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the patties keep their shape while cooking.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown in the skillet.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in a skillet until golden brown. Cooking over steady heat until the surface browns builds flavor through the Maillard reaction, while the centre must be cooked through so the beef is safe to eat.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, milk, butter, 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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