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Beef Minced and Poached Eggs

A savory dish of minced beef topped with poached eggs and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 Minced and Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the beef filling

  1. Peel and finely chop the onion, then fry it in butter until golden brown.

  2. Add flour to the onions and stir over heat for a few minutes.

  3. Mince the beef, removing all skin and gristle, and add it to the saucepan.

  4. Moisten the mixture with stock, season with salt and pepper, and cook gently for 20 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Make a high border of mashed potatoes in a small dish and pour the beef mixture into the center.

  2. Poach the eggs in boiling water with a little salt and lemon juice, then trim them.

  3. Place the poached eggs on the beef mixture, spaced evenly apart.

  4. Garnish with toast and parsley, and serve very hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef
Forms the main meaty body of the filling.
Potatoes
Mashed potato forms a firm border that holds the filling in place.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion, adding richness and browning flavor.
Flour
Thickens the stock and fat into a cohesive, spoonable filling.
Eggs
Poached eggs add soft, runny yolk richness on top of the filling.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs in gently simmering water. Eggs boiled too hard break apart and feather, while fresh eggs in gently simmering water hold their shape. The added salt and lemon juice help the whites set more quickly and neatly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, butter, flour, onion, 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.

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