Skip to main content
Main

Hash, Cold Beef or Mutton

A hash made from sliced cold beef or mutton simmered in a butter‑flour sauce with stock, onions, and optional pickles, mushrooms, or tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Hash, Cold Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut the cold meat into neat slices, removing skin and gristle.

  2. Combine the minced onion, butter, and flour in a saucepan.

  3. Stir over medium heat until smooth and lightly browned.

  4. Gradually add the stock or water with the bones and trimmings.

  5. Simmer gently until the sauce thickens to a cream‑like consistency.

  6. Strain the sauce.

  7. Return the strained sauce to the heat.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, add pickles, mushrooms, or tomatoes to the sauce before adding the meat.

  2. Add the meat slices.

  3. Heat until hot, ensuring the sauce does not boil to keep the meat tender.

  4. Serve with toasted sippets around the 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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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 meat
Provides the main body of the dish; gentle heating keeps it tender and juicy.
Onion
Adds savoury flavour and body to the sauce as it softens and cooks down.
Butter
Carries flavour and, with flour, forms the base that enriches the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it a smooth, cream-like texture.

The step that matters

Heat the meat without boiling the sauce. Boiling toughens and dries meat proteins, so the sauce should only be heated gently until the meat is hot. Keeping it below a boil preserves tenderness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, flour, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes