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To Hash Beef

A quick beef hash simmered with water, catsup, garlic, pepper, and salt, thickened with butter and brown flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Hash Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut slices of raw beef.

  2. Place beef in a stew pan with water, catsup, garlic, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew until the beef is cooked through.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy by rubbing butter into brown flour and adding it to the pan.

  2. Serve hot, ensuring the hash is only heated briefly.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Raw beef
Forms the main body of the hash, becoming tender as it stews.
Brown flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when combined with butter.
Butter
Coats the flour so it blends smoothly into the liquid without lumping, adding richness.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Rubbing it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly, and the gravy thickens smoothly as it heats.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, garlic, pepper, butter, flour. 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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