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Hashed Beef on Toast

A dish of finely 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: Bread and butter 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

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold roast beef finely and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. For each pint of meat, add 1 tablespoon of flour and stir well.

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

Cook

  1. Put the mixture in a small saucepan, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Meanwhile, toast 6 slices of bread until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. After 20 minutes, spread the beef mixture on the toasted bread.

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

  3. 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. Bread + buttertop 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. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 meat that forms the savoury filling.
Flour
Thickens the stock or water into a cohesive, spreadable mixture as it simmers.
Soup stock or water
Provides the liquid that moistens the beef and carries the flour as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth finish when water replaces the stock.

The step that matters

Simmering with flour. Flour must be stirred in well before simmering so it dissolves evenly; otherwise lumps form and the mixture thickens unevenly.

“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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