Skip to main content
Main

Minced Beef

A dish of diced cold beef simmered in gravy, seasoned with mace, eschalot, salt, pepper, and walnut catsup, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Minced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut cold beef into small dice.

  2. In a stew pan, combine reserved gravy, warm water, mace, sliced eschalot, salt, and black pepper.

Simmer

  1. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the meat and dish it.

Finish and serve

  1. Add walnut catsup and lemon juice or walnut pickle to the gravy.

  2. Boil the gravy once more and pour it over the meat.

  3. Serve with bread snippets.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its meaty, sliceable texture.
Reserved gravy
Provides the moist, savoury liquid that coats the meat.
Walnut catsup
Adds concentrated savoury depth and a rich, dark flavour to the gravy.
Lemon juice or walnut pickle
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances its richness.
Eschalot
Adds a mild onion-like aroma and sweetness that mellows during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1 hour. Gentle heat lets the meat soften slowly and keeps the gravy clear. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and makes the liquid cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, walnut, lemon, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes