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Baked Minced Beef

A baked dish of minced beef mixed with eschalots, mushrooms, ketchup, gravy, spices, bread crumbs, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Minced Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Mince the beef finely, using the least cooked parts of a cold roast joint.

  2. Season the beef with cayenne, mace or nutmeg, and salt.

Assemble

  1. Add minced eschalots, chopped mushrooms, and mushroom ketchup, then mix well.

  2. Moisten the mixture with gravy and place it in a deep dish.

  3. Top with a layer of bread crumbs and moisten with clarified butter.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 20 minutes or brown in a Dutch oven.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced beef
Provides the main body and savoury meaty flavour of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they absorb butter and brown in the oven.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour on the crumb topping.
Gravy
Moistens the meat so it stays tender and binds the mixture as it bakes.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the beef.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, bread, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, bread, butter. 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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