Skip to main content
Main

Minced Beef

A sautéed minced beef dish flavored with chutney sauce, gravy, parsley, and onions, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and shallot 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 ↓

Minced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the sliced onion and fry until yellowish brown.

  3. Stir in the gravy and chopped parsley.

  4. Add the chutney and minced beef, heating through without re-cooking.

  5. Serve on a platter garnished with parsley and fried bread.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Beef + shallottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,103 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Minced beef
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides the main savoury meat flavour.
Gravy
Adds moisture and liquid so the beef stays tender and saucy when heated.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onion and adds richness and browning.
Shallot or small onion
Softens and browns in butter, adding sweetness and depth of flavour.
Chutney sauce
Adds sweet and sour acidity that balances the rich beef and gravy.

The step that matters

Add the chutney and minced beef, heating through without re-cooking. The beef is already cooked and cold, so it only needs gentle heat. Prolonged cooking would toughen the meat and dry it out, so heat it just until hot throughout.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sauce, shallot, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sauce, shallot, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes