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Salt Beef Hash

A hash made with boiled salt beef, onions, potatoes, carrots, seasoned with salt, pepper, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salt Beef Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef and onions

  1. Boil the salt beef until tender, then chop it into pieces.

  2. Slice and fry the onions in butter until nicely browned.

Assemble and simmer

  1. Add the chopped meat, boiled and sliced potatoes, chopped carrots, salt, pepper, and enough stock to moisten.

  2. Simmer gently for twenty 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Salt beef
Provides the main savoury, meaty flavour and the chunky body of the hash.
Onions
Frying until browned turns their sugars into sweetness and deep, savoury flavour.
Potatoes
Their starch softens and partly thickens the hash, binding it together.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness, colour and a tender bite to the mixture.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness and browned, nutty flavour.
Stock
Supplies the moisture that keeps the hash from drying out while it simmers.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until nicely browned. Browning caramelises the onions' natural sugars, giving sweet, deep flavour. Pale, underdone onions taste raw and flat, and that flavour carries through the whole hash.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, potato, pepper, butter. 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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