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Beef Miroton

A baked dish of minced corned beef with pickle, eggs, gravy, mashed potatoes, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beef Miroton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the corned beef and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, chopped pickle, and finely chopped boiled eggs.

  2. Wet the mixture with gravy and place it in a greased pudding dish.

Top and bake

  1. Cover with soft mashed potatoes made with milk and butter.

  2. Sift bread crumbs over the top and bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the cover and brown the top.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef
Forms the meaty base of the dish, holding its bulk and savory flavor.
Boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the minced filling as they set slightly with heat.
Gravy
Moistens the minced meat so the filling stays tender rather than dry during baking.
Mashed potatoes
Form a soft topping that bakes into a creamy layer over the filling.
Bread crumbs
Crisp and brown on the surface when uncovered, adding texture and color.

The step that matters

Remove the cover and brown the top. Baking covered traps steam so the potato topping stays soft; the surface only browns through dry heat once uncovered, so the cover must come off for the final colour and crust to form.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, egg, milk, butter, 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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