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Hashed Beef

Hashed beef is a baked dish of ground beef, suet, onions, breadcrumbs, stock, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Hashed Beef

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 ↓

Hashed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the beef, suet, and onions together.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and parsley.

  3. Mix in the breadcrumbs and moisten with stock.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a dish or mold.

  2. Cover with breadcrumbs and drizzle with lemon juice.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until well browned.

  4. Serve with mashed potatoes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the meaty body of the dish and provides most of its savory flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the chopped meat moist and rich during baking.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb stock and fat, helping bind the mixture and giving the top a browned crust.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown with the meat.
Stock
Moistens the mixture so it stays tender rather than drying out in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until well browned. The meat is underdone when raw, so it needs enough heat and time to cook through. Browning the surface through dry heat creates flavor, but the mixture can dry out if overbaked.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, parsley, 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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