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Beef, Minced, Savory

A savory stew of minced beef with shallots, stock, and spices, served hot with potatoes or toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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, Savory

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Fry the shallots in a little beef dripping until soft.

  2. Stir in the stock with the browned flour and store sauce, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the chopped walnuts, a little vinegar, salt, pepper, and mustard.

  4. Cut the beef into small dice and add it to the gravy, cooking for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot 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
Provides the main meat body, becoming tender as it simmers in the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy and adds a toasted, savoury flavour.
Plain stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy that the beef cooks in.
Shallots
Softened in dripping, they add a mild, sweet onion-like base flavour.
Pickled walnut
Adds a sharp, tangy, acidic flavour that cuts through the rich gravy.

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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