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Brown Hash

Brown Hash is a stew of browned beef, rice, tomatoes, onion, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brown Hash

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add chopped beef and brown the meat.

  3. Add ¾ cup raw rice and cook until browned.

  4. Combine browned rice with beef, 1 cup tomatoes, 1 teaspoon black pepper, chopped onion, and ¼ teaspoon salt.

  5. Stew the mixture for 20 minutes.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Browns in the butter to build savory, meaty flavor that carries through the dish.
Raw rice
Absorbs liquid and cooks through as the mixture stews, providing the bulk of the dish.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that help the rice cook as the mixture stews.
Butter
Fat that carries heat for browning the beef and rice and adds richness.

The step that matters

Browning the beef and rice. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs direct contact with hot fat and enough space in the pan. Crowding or steaming the meat leaves it grey and bland, so flavor is lost before stewing.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, rice, tomato, pepper. 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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