Skip to main content
Main

Baked Minced Beef

A baked dish of minced beef mixed with spices, shallots, mushrooms, gravy, and breadcrumbs, topped with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. 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 shallots and chopped mushrooms or mushroom ketchup, and mix well.

  2. Combine 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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, browned topping that soaks up some of the moisture.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that moistens the crumbs and helps them brown.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour that binds the meat mixture.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aroma that deepens the savoury base.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven. A slow oven cooks the minced meat gently through without drying it out, while the buttered crumbs slowly brown on top. Too high a heat can toughen the meat and burn the crumbs before the centre is cooked.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, shallot, mushroom, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes