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Making Minced Ham

A mixture of beef, pork, and potato flour cooked slowly to produce minced ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Making Minced Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Combine 50% good beef and 50% fairly lean pork trimmings, ensuring pork fat does not exceed 50%.

  2. For a variation, use 45% beef, 10% meat products, and 45% pork trimmings.

Mix and cook

  1. Mix in 5 pounds of potato flour for every 100 pounds of meat.

  2. Cook in bladders or large beef bungs at 155°F (68°C) for 4 to 5 hours.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Good beef
Provides lean protein and meaty flavor that forms the main structure of the mince.
Fairly lean pork trimmings
Adds fat, which keeps the mince juicy and tender as it cooks.
Potato flour
Absorbs and holds moisture and fat, helping the mince stay bound and juicy.

The step that matters

Cooking at 155°F for 4 to 5 hours. Holding a steady, moderate temperature cooks the meat through while keeping its fat and moisture in place. Running hotter makes the fat render out, leaving the texture dry and crumbly.

“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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