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Minced Beef

A quick sautéed minced beef cooked with butter, onion, gravy, and strong ale, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef 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 Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mince

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion until rich brown.

  2. Add the gravy and strong ale, seasoning with pepper and salt.

  3. Stir over heat until the onion is well cooked.

  4. Add the finely cut cold beef and stir until heated through.

  5. Do not allow the mixture to boil after adding the beef to keep it tender.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef
Provides the meat that gives the dish its body and bite.
Onion
Browning in butter builds a sweet, savoury base of flavour.
Gravy
Adds liquid and savoury depth that keeps the mince moist.
Strong ale
Adds bitter, malty flavour that complements the browned onion and beef.

The step that matters

Do not let the mixture boil after adding the beef. The beef is already cooked, so it only needs to heat through. Boiling toughens the meat proteins and dries out the mince, making it less tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, beef. 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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