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Scraped Beef

Scraped Beef is thinly sliced beef scraped into small cakes, broiled, and served with butter, parsley, celery, or lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scraped Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into thin slices.

  2. Scrape the meat with a sharp knife until the pulp separates from the tough fibers.

  3. Form the scraped meat into small cakes or patties.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil or pan-broil the cakes, seasoning with a little salt.

  2. Serve on a hot plate with a small piece of butter and garnish with parsley, celery, or young lettuce.

  3. Optionally, add a few drops of fluid beef extract with the butter.

  4. For serving on toast, soften the toast with hot beef-tea or beef-juice.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein; scraping separates tender pulp from tough fibers for a soft, juicy patty.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor over the hot patty as it is served.

The step that matters

Scraping the meat. Scraping must stop at the pulp and leave the tough fibers out, because fibers left in make the patty chewy and uneven. Thin slices and a sharp knife help the pulp separate cleanly.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, parsley, celery, bread):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, parsley, celery, 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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