Skip to main content
Main

Beef Loaf

A loaf made from minced beef, soda biscuits, egg, butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, baked in an oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Beef Loaf

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Loaf

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Roll the soda biscuits and mix them with the minced beef.

Shape and bake

  1. Add melted butter, well-beaten egg, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  2. Press the mixture into a loaf tin or shape it into a roll.

  3. Bake for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced beef
Forms the main body of the loaf and gives it its meaty structure.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the loaf holds its shape when baked and sets as it cooks.
Soda biscuits
Soak up juices and add soft crumb-like body that keeps the loaf moist.
Butter
Adds fat for moisture and richness, keeping the loaf from drying out.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the beef.

The step that matters

Press the mixture into the tin. Packing the mixture too firmly squeezes out moisture and makes the loaf dense and tough, so press gently just enough to fill the tin evenly.

“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.

More beef loaf recipes

Spiced 9 See all 201 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes