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Minced Meat with Brown Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Minced Meat with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the dark meats into large pieces.

  2. Brown the meat in drippings or butter.

  3. Add brown sauce or heat cold brown gravy to finish.

  4. If using a small amount of meat, mix in an equal quantity of cold chopped potatoes.

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. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  2. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes

Butter and sauce 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

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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