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Beef Hashed, a LA Feancaise

A savory beef hash cooked with butter, flour, onion, parsley, and a lemon‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Hashed, a LA Feancaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the chopped onion and minced parsley, and cook until browned.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  5. Pour in the water and add the beef slices.

Cook and thicken

  1. Heat gradually until near boiling.

  2. Mix the egg yolks with lemon juice and use to thicken the sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 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 main body of the hash, cooked gently in the sauce until tender.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water base into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns in the butter.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the onion and parsley and adds richness.

The step that matters

Mix the egg yolks with lemon juice and use to thicken the sauce.. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but can scramble and curdle if the sauce boils. Add the yolk mixture off the heat or over very low heat, stirring constantly, so the sauce becomes smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, beef):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, beef. 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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