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Hashed Beef on Toast

Hashed beef on toast is a savory dish of seasoned roast beef mixed 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 the beef

  1. Season the chopped cold roast beef with pepper and 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 and toast

  1. Put the mixture into a small stew pan, cover it, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Toast 6 slices of bread until nicely browned.

Serve

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

  2. Serve immediately on a hot dish.

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

Beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and the chopped texture of the topping.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy as the mixture simmers.
Soup stock
Adds savory liquid that keeps the beef moist while it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness when water replaces the stock.
Bread
Forms a browned base whose crispness contrasts with the soft beef.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Stir the flour thoroughly into the meat so it disperses evenly. Starch only thickens once it is wet and heated, so unmixed pockets of flour can stay dry and form lumps in the gravy.

“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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