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Minced Beef

A simple stew of minced beef, onion, and bread crumbs, seasoned with pepper, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Minced Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Shred the beef and place it in a stewpan with the chopped onion.

  2. Add enough water to cover the beef.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

  4. Boil until the beef is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over bread crumbs.

  2. Add the vinegar.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 of the dish and becomes tender through simmering in water.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the beef mixture.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the cooking liquid and give the dish a soft, moist texture.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich, savoury beef.

The step that matters

Boil until the beef is tender. Minced beef needs enough time in simmering water for its connective tissue and fibres to soften. Stopping early leaves the meat firm and chewy, so check for tenderness before moving on.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, vinegar, 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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