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Beef, Minced, Savoury

A savory gravy of minced beef, shallots, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, walnuts, stock, mustard, and store sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef, Minced, Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Fry the shallots in a little beef dripping.

  2. Stir in the stock with the browned flour and store sauce.

  3. Boil the mixture well, then add the chopped walnuts and a little of their vinegar.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and mustard.

Cook and serve

  1. Cut the beef into small dice.

  2. Add the diced beef to the gravy and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Bring to just below boiling before serving.

  4. Serve with a border of potatoes or other vegetables, or with toast or croutons.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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, becoming tender as it simmers in the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as its starch swells with heat.
Pickled walnut
Adds a sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the beef.
Shallots
Build a mild, sweet savoury base when fried in dripping.
Stock
Provides the liquid that forms the gravy and carries the flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture well before adding the walnuts. Boiling the stock and flour thoroughly lets the starch fully swell and thicken, so the gravy becomes smooth rather than thin or floury.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, shallot, parsley, thyme, flour, sauce, pepper):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, parsley, thyme, flour, sauce, pepper. 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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