Skip to main content
Main

Beef Loaf

A loaf of ground beef mixed with cream, eggs, butter, salt, sage, and pepper, baked and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Beef Loaf

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Loaf

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the beef using a meat grinder.

  2. In a bowl, combine the ground beef, cream, egg yolks, egg white, melted butter, salt, sage, and pepper.

  3. Pack the mixture solidly into a bread pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 40 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, slice thinly and garnish with sliced pickles or olives.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + sagetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef (top round)
Provides the main body and meaty flavor of the loaf.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the loaf as it sets.
Egg white
Helps the loaf set firm and hold its shape when baked.
Cream
Adds moisture and tenderness to the ground meat.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a moister, softer texture.

The step that matters

Packing the mixture solidly into the pan. Ground meat packed without air pockets bakes into a dense, sliceable loaf. Loosely packed mixture can crumble when cut and may cook unevenly.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cream, egg, butter, 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.

More beef loaf recipes

Spiced 9 See all 201 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipesBeef CroquettesBeef Croquettes58 recipes