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Beef Hashed

A stew of beef bones, onions, carrot, and herbs in a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Break the bones into small pieces.

  2. Stew the bones in water with sweet herbs and a few onions.

  3. In a separate pan, melt butter and mix in flour until browned.

  4. Pour the gravy from the bones into the butter mixture.

Make the hash

  1. Add the meat, sliced onions, carrot, and parsley to the pan.

  2. Stew gently until the meat is heated through.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Bones of the joint
Simmered in water to produce the flavourful gravy base.
Butter
Melts with flour to form a roux that thickens the gravy.
Flour
Combines with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the gravy.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma to the stewed hash.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the meat is heated through. Gentle heat warms the meat without toughening it, while high heat can make meat dry and tough and can break the gravy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, flour, parsley. 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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