Skip to main content
Main

Meat Patties

Meat patties made from minced beef, mutton, suet, eggs, flour, and water, boiled and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Meat Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the beef, mutton, and suet together with the salt.

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, flour, and water to form a thick paste.

  2. Roll out the paste with a rolling pin into a flat sheet.

Form and cook

  1. Place some minced meat on the paste and fold it over to form patties.

  2. Boil the patties in hot water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the patties and serve with melted butter poured over them.

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 + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the flour and water into a thick paste that holds its shape around the filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste wrapper, which sets firm when boiled.
Lean beef
Provides the main meaty filling and its savory flavor.
Mutton
Adds richer, more pronounced meat flavor to the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the minced filling moist and tender during cooking.

The step that matters

Sealing the patties before boiling. If the paste is not folded fully and sealed around the minced meat, the filling can leak into the boiling water. A thick, evenly rolled paste with no thin spots holds the filling in while the patties cook.

“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 meat patties recipes

Cold 9Puff Pastry 5Sweet 3 See all 19 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes