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Minced Beef with Tomatoes and Onions

A stew of minced beef, tomatoes, onions, and stock served over mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Minced Beef with Tomatoes and Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Fry the onions in a pan until soft.

  2. Add the sliced tomatoes and cook briefly.

  3. Stir in the minced beef, stock, pepper, and salt.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour.

Serve

  1. On a serving dish, create a wall of mashed potatoes.

  2. Pour the beef and tomato mixture into the center of the mashed potatoes.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 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 beef
Provides the main body and meaty substance of the stew.
Onions
Soften and release sweetness as they cook, forming the base flavour.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that brighten the stewed mixture.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy that clings to the beef.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid for a while, or it stays floury and lumpy. Stirring it in smoothly before the stew is thick helps avoid clumps.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, pepper, flour, 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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