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Beef, Hash

A savory beef hash cooked with butter, flour, onion, parsley, broth, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef, Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add a little flour.

  2. Stir in the chopped onion and parsley, browning the mixture without burning it.

  3. Add the boiling broth, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Heat and thicken

  1. Incorporate slices of cold beef and heat gradually by the side of the fire.

  2. Thicken the sauce with flour mixed in water or beaten eggs mixed with lemon juice when the sauce is near boiling.

  3. Cook for 15 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the hash, heated gently so it stays tender in the sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the onion and parsley and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce and gives the base body when cooked in the butter.
Broth
Forms the liquid of the sauce, carrying the seasonings through the dish.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with eggs. Egg proteins set when heated, so the sauce can curdle or turn grainy if it boils hard. Add the egg and lemon mixture only when the sauce is near boiling, and keep the heat gentle.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, beef, lemon. 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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