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Scraped Raw Beef Sandwiches

A sandwich made with finely scraped raw beef seasoned with pepper and salt, served on buttered bread and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Scraped Raw Beef Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely scrape the raw beef.

  2. Season the beef with pepper and salt.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the beef between the two slices of buttered bread.

  2. Cut the sandwiches into diamond shapes, 2½ inches long and 1 inch wide.

  3. Arrange the sandwiches on a small plate and garnish with parsley.

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

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Raw beef
Provides the entire filling, with its fresh, juicy texture and savory flavor carrying the sandwich.
Bread
Supplies the soft base that holds the raw beef together and gives the sandwich its structure.
Butter
Adds a thin layer of fat that moistens the bread and keeps it from soaking up the beef's juices.

The step that matters

Finely scrape the raw beef. Scraping rather than chopping breaks the meat into a fine, soft texture that spreads evenly and is easy to chew. Fresh, well-chilled beef is important because raw meat is safest and tastes best when it is very fresh and kept cold until serving.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, 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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