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Beef, Hash, with Croutons

A stew of sliced cold beef simmered in stock with lemon pickle, mushroom ketchup, claret, and fried onions, served with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef, Hash, with Croutons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine stock, lemon pickle, mushroom ketchup, claret, and fried onions in a stewpan.

  2. Heat the mixture over a clear fire until the onions are tender.

Add the beef

  1. Pour the mixture over the sliced cold beef and cover.

  2. Let it stand for 20 minutes.

  3. Move the stewpan closer to the fire, but do not allow it to boil.

Make the croutons and serve

  1. Cut the bread into thin rounds or desired shapes for the croutons.

  2. Fry the bread in boiling butter until golden brown.

  3. Drain the fried bread on a cloth.

  4. Serve the beef hash with the croutons.

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. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef
Provides the main body of the hash, becoming tender as it soaks in the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Good stock
Forms the liquid base that moistens and flavours the beef.
Silver button onions
Add sweetness and a soft texture to the sauce.
Bread
Fries to a golden brown, giving a crisp contrast to the soft hash.

The step that matters

Move the stewpan closer to the fire, but do not allow it to boil.. Boiling a meat mixture toughens the proteins and can make the beef dry and stringy, so gentle heat keeps it tender and juicy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, ketchup, onion, butter, beef, bread):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ketchup, onion, butter, beef, bread. 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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