Name: Beef, Minced
Ingredients: 1 lb cold roast beef; 1 oz flour; 1 oz butter; 1 onion, coarsely chopped; 1 small carrot, diced; ¼ small turnip, diced; 1 bouquet garni (parsley, thyme, bay leaf); 6 peppercorns

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

Ingredients

Directions

Mince the cold roast beef finely.
In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add the chopped onion, carrot, and turnip; sauté until softened.
Stir in the minced beef and flour, mixing well.
Add the bouquet garni and peppercorns; cook for a few minutes.
Serve hot.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef: Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish, served minced.
Flour: Thickens the cooking juices and helps the minced beef bind together.
Butter: Adds fat for sautéing the vegetables and carries flavour through the dish.
Onion: Softens and sweetens as it sautés, building a savoury base.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme. 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.