Skip to main content
Main

Caxxeb Roast Beef, Hash

A hash of canned roast beef, boiled potatoes, onion, seasoned with pepper and sea salt, cooked in a greased pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Caxxeb Roast Beef, Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the meat and vegetables thoroughly.

  2. Mix the chopped meat and vegetables well and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Brown the mixture in a greased frying pan or dish over medium heat.

  2. If potatoes are unavailable, substitute with softened hard bread or boiled rice.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned roast beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and most of the bulk of the hash.
Boiled potatoes
Adds starch that gives body and helps hold the hash together while it browns.
Onion
Adds aroma and gentle sweetness as it softens and browns in the pan.

The step that matters

Brown the mixture over medium heat. Surface browning develops rich flavor through Maillard reactions. The mixture needs enough contact with a hot, lightly greased pan to crisp rather than steam, so it should be spread out and left undisturbed for a while.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, pepper, pork. 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes