Skip to main content
Main

Beef Mince

A simple minced beef dish served on hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Prepare

  1. Remove all sinews and fat from the beef and mince it very fine.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced meat and onion juice, stirring for 3-4 minutes until heated through.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef mince on hot buttered toast.

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 from the round
Provides the main protein, which firms and browns as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the mince brown in the pan.
Onion juice
Adds savoury onion aroma and flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Heating the minced meat. Stirring for 3-4 minutes over medium heat heats the mince through without letting it dry out or toughen. Finely minced meat cooks quickly, so overcooking makes it dry and grainy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes