Skip to main content
Main

Cooked Meat for Mince Pies

Cooked lean beef seasoned with salt and pepper, boiled until almost dry, used as filling for mince pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cooked Meat for Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Wash the beef and place it in a kettle with enough water to cover it.

  2. Remove the scum as it reaches boiling point.

  3. Add hot water as needed until tender.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Boil uncovered until almost dry, allowing the juices to return to the meat.

  6. When it begins to fry in its own juices, remove from heat.

Cool

  1. Let cool, preferably overnight.

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 + 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

Lean beef
Forms the meaty body of the filling, becoming tender through long simmering and reabsorbing its own juices.

The step that matters

Stopping the boil at the right point. Boiling uncovered until nearly dry concentrates flavour and lets juices return to the meat. Removing it too early leaves a wet, loose filling, while overcooking makes the meat dry and tough.

“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