Skip to main content
Main

Cold Minced Beef

Cold minced beef is a seasoned beef mixture simmered with oatmeal, herbs, onion, and catsup, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cold Minced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the fat and skin from the beef and mince it nearly to a paste.

  2. Stew the beef gently overnight to skim off the fat.

Season and simmer

  1. Season with pepper and salt.

  2. Sprinkle with oatmeal.

  3. Add chopped parsley, thyme, and the chopped onion.

  4. Pour in enough broth or a mixture of skim milk and water to cover the beef.

  5. Let it simmer for two hours.

  6. Thicken with a little oatmeal.

  7. Stir in the catsup.

  8. Boil for one minute.

  9. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the bulk of the dish and, once minced finely, gives a smooth, paste-like texture.
Oatmeal
Absorbs liquid and thickens the mixture as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor and savory sweetness as it softens in the liquid.
Broth or skim milk and water
Provides the cooking liquid that moistens the beef during the long simmer.
Mushroom or walnut catsup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Stew the beef gently overnight to skim off the fat. Gentle heat lets fat rise so it can be skimmed cleanly; boiling would emulsify the fat into the liquid and leave the dish greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, parsley, thyme, milk, mushroom, 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.

You might also like

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