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Hashed Beef on Toast

A dish of seasoned chopped roast beef simmered with flour and stock, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hashed Beef on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hash

  1. Season the chopped beef with salt and pepper.

  2. For each pint of meat, add 2 tablespoons of flour and stir well.

  3. Add ½ cup of soup stock or water to the mixture.

  4. Place the mixture in a small saucepan, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast 6 slices of bread until golden brown.

  2. After 20 minutes, spread the beef mixture on the toast.

  3. If using water instead of soup stock, add 1 tablespoon of butter before spreading the beef.

  4. Serve immediately on a hot dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Cold roast beef
Provides the main meat and savory flavor of the hash.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock into a binding sauce that holds the beef together.
Soup stock or water
Supplies the liquid that moistens the beef and forms the sauce.
Bread
Gives a crisp, browned base that holds the hot beef mixture.

The step that matters

Simmering the covered mixture. Flour thickens the liquid only as it heats and simmers, so the mixture must be cooked long enough for the sauce to become smooth and cohesive rather than pasty or lumpy.

“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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