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Beef Trifles

A baked dish of minced beef, breadcrumbs, pepper, salt, onion, egg, parsley, and optional gravy or milk, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Trifles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the beef and onion very finely.

  2. Mix the minced beef with bread crumbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add chopped parsley or finely scraped horse-radish and mix thoroughly.

  4. Moisten the mixture with the beaten egg and add gravy or milk if very dry.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter small cups or molds and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  3. Garnish with sprigs of parsley and serve with horse-radish sauce or brown gravy.

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

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef
Forms the main body of the trifles and gives them their meaty flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together while it bakes.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm as it bakes.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with the beaten egg and add gravy or milk if very dry.. Cooked beef and dry crumbs can bake up crumbly. Enough liquid and egg gives moisture and binding, so the trifles hold their shape without becoming dense or dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, egg, parsley, milk, 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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