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Mince of Cold Meat

A dish of minced cold meat simmered in brown sauce, served with toasted bread, hard‑boiled egg, or potato garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mince of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mince

  1. Heat the brown sauce in a saucepan.

  2. Add the minced cold meat to the sauce.

  3. Simmer for about 15 minutes, if necessary.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Serve garnished with toasted bread, hard-boiled egg, or a wall of potato.

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 + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Provides the bulk and main savoury flavour of the dish.
Brown sauce
Supplies moisture and rich savoury flavour that coats the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Keeping the mince at a gentle simmer heats the already cooked meat through without toughening it. A hard boil can dry out the meat and reduce the sauce too much.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, pepper, 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.

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