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Beef Mince

A quick skillet dish of finely minced beef cooked with butter, onion juice, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Beef Mince

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 ↓

Beef Mince

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced beef and onion juice.

  3. Stir for 3-4 minutes until the meat is heated through.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, then serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body and protein of the dish, and browns lightly as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, helping the meat brown gently in the pan.
Onion juice
Adds a savoury, aromatic onion flavour to the minced meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the beef and butter.

The step that matters

Stir for 3-4 minutes until the meat is heated through. Very fine mince cooks quickly and can turn dry or grey if overcooked. Stop once it is just heated through, since the meat keeps firming as it sits.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Limefits about as well

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