Skip to main content
Main

Baked Minced Beef

A baked dish of minced beef with spices, shallots, mushrooms, ketchup, gravy, bread crumbs, and clarified butter.

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

Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Baked Minced Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Mince the beef finely, using meat from a cold roast joint.

  2. Season the beef with cayenne, mace or nutmeg, and salt.

Mix the filling

  1. Add minced shallots, chopped mushrooms, and mushroom ketchup.

  2. Moisten the mixture with gravy and mix well.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a deep dish and top with bread crumbs.

  2. Moisten the bread crumbs with clarified butter.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 20 minutes or until browned.

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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Minced beef
Provides the main body and savory meaty flavor of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping when baked with butter.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crumbs brown and crisp.
Gravy
Moistens the meat so the mixture stays juicy while baking.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the filling.
Shallots
Contribute a mild aromatic onion flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Moisten the bread crumbs with clarified butter. Fat coats the crumbs so they brown and crisp in the oven rather than drying out or staying pale.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, shallot, mushroom, ketchup, bread, butter. 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 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes