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Cold Minced Beef

A chilled minced beef mixture seasoned with salt, pepper, oatmeal, herbs, onion, broth or milk, and served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cold Minced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the fat and skin from the beef and mince it nearly to a paste.

  2. Stew the beef gently, preferably overnight, to skim off the fat.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Sprinkle with oatmeal.

  5. Chop a half a handful of parsley and thyme and add the chopped parsley and thyme to the mixture.

  6. Boil the onion until nearly tender, chop it, and mix the chopped onion into the mixture.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add enough broth or skim milk and water to cover the beef.

  2. Simmer for two hours.

  3. Thicken the mixture with a little oatmeal.

  4. Stir in a dessert spoonful of mushroom or walnut catsup and boil for one minute.

  5. Serve with toasted pieces of bread.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body and rich meaty flavour of the dish.
Oatmeal
Thickens the mixture as it absorbs liquid and cooks.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the mixture.
Mushroom or walnut catsup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Stew the beef gently to skim off the fat. Slow, gentle heat lets fat rise so it can be skimmed off cleanly. Vigorous boiling mixes fat into the liquid, leaving a greasy, cloudy result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, parsley, thyme, milk, mushroom, bread):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, parsley, thyme, milk, mushroom, bread. 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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