Skip to main content
Main

Baked Mince Roll

A baked roll of ground beef, ham or tongue mixed with breadcrumbs, parsley, pepper, salt, and egg, wrapped in short crust pastry.

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

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Mince Roll

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

  1. Pass the meat through a grinding machine.

  2. In a bowl, combine the ground meat, bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, salt, and beaten egg.

  3. Make a short crust pastry and roll it out.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the meat mixture on the pastry and fold it over to form a neat roll.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with thick brown sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef, ham, or tongue
Provides the main meaty body and savory flavor of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the ground meat so the filling holds together.
Beaten egg
Binds the filling and sets during baking, helping the roll hold its shape.
Short crust pastry
Forms the enclosing crust that holds the roll and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding the roll closed. If the pastry edges are not sealed tightly, the filling can leak and dry out during the long bake, and the roll may lose its neat shape.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, egg. 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