Skip to main content
Main

To Mince Beef

A dish of finely shredded underdone beef cooked with onion, water, salt, pepper, gravy, vinegar, and served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Mince Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the underdone beef and some fat finely.

Cook

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the beef, onion, water, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil until the onion is soft.

  3. Add the meat gravy and minced beef. Do not let it boil.

  4. Mix in the vinegar before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve in a small hot dish with slices of bread.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  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 meaty body and flavour of the dish.
Gravy from the meat
Adds moisture and concentrated meat flavour to the mince.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury beef.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil after adding the gravy and minced beef. Boiling toughens the meat proteins and makes the mince dry and grainy. Keeping the liquid just below a boil keeps the meat tender and moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, meat, vinegar, 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.

More minced beef recipes

Baked 24Collops 9Soup 4Stew 4Cold 3with Gravy 3 See all 8 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes