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: Beef and mushroom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,231 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Beef + mushroomtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,231 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together12,516 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + mushroomtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,960 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned 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.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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

Illustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Roast BeefIllustrationRoast Beef211 recipesIllustration of Beef LoafIllustrationBeef Loaf175 recipesIllustration of Corned BeefIllustrationCorned Beef87 recipes