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Minced Meat

A minced meat sauce served over mashed potatoes with toast pieces.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Minced Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meat sauce

  1. Make a thick sauce by combining the milk, flour, and butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Mince the cold meat using a meat grinder.

  3. Sprinkle the minced meat with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and herbs, then stir it into the sauce.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and keep it warm.

Plate and serve

  1. On a small hot dish, create a wall of nicely mashed potatoes.

  2. Pour the minced meat mixture into the center and arrange small pieces of toast around the potatoes.

  3. Serve hot for luncheon.

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

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 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 meat
Forms the main filling, providing bulk and savory flavour in the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds the minced meat.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth flavour to the sauce.
Mashed potatoes
Forms the soft wall that holds the meat mixture on the dish.

The step that matters

Make a thick sauce. Flour thickens milk only when it is stirred as it heats, so whisking it in well prevents lumps and gives a smooth sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, milk, flour, butter, pepper, potato):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, flour, butter, pepper, potato. 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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