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Mince Beef with Cucumbers

A minced beef dish served with sautéed cucumber pieces in a consommé-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mince Beef with Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the beef as directed for mincing with onions.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into round pieces the size of a shilling.

  3. Fry the cucumber pieces until brown, then drain on a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small stewpan, combine the cucumbers with the consommé, plain sauce, salt, and sugar.

  2. Simmer gently until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Place the minced beef in a dish and pour the cucumbers over it.

  2. Add a little lemon juice before serving.

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. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meaty bulk the sauce is served over.
Cucumbers
Fried until brown, they add browned flavour and a tender, soft texture to the sauce.
Consommé
Adds savoury liquid that, reduced with the sauce, carries flavour through the dish.
Plain sauce
Thickens the liquid and gives the cucumbers a smooth, coating consistency.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the sauce thickens. Simmering gently lets the liquid reduce and the starch in the sauce thicken evenly. Boiling hard can scorch the bottom of the pan and break the sauce, leaving it lumpy or thin.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, cucumber, sauce, sugar):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, cucumber, sauce, 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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