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Sauce for Minced Beef

A savory sauce made with onions, vinegar, brown sauce, broth, mushrooms, gherkins, and seasonings for minced beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sauce for Minced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew-pan, combine chopped onions, malt vinegar, and glaze. Boil together for a few minutes.

  2. Add brown sauce and broth; stir quickly over high heat until the sauce coats the back of a spoon.

  3. Stir in chopped mushrooms and gherkins. Season with Nepal pepper, salt, and sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce separately with minced beef and poached eggs.

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 + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sauce
Provides the main body, savoury flavour and colour of the sauce.
Broth
Adds liquid and savoury depth, helping the sauce loosen and spread.
Malt vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the brown sauce.
Chopped gherkins
Contribute sharp, acidic bite and texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening over high heat. Stirring quickly over high heat helps the sauce reduce and thicken evenly, while preventing it from scorching on the base of the pan. Stop once it coats the back of a spoon, since it thickens further as it cools.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (malt, vinegar, sauce, mushroom, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against malt, vinegar, sauce, mushroom, pepper, sugar. 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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