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Norman Hash

A savory dish of fried button onions, beef, and wine gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Norman Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Peel and fry the button onions in butter until lightly browned.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until the mixture is a deep amber shade.

  3. Pour in the red wine and boiling broth or water.

  4. Season with salt, black pepper or cayenne, and lemon pickle, catsup, or lemon juice.

  5. Boil until the onions are tender.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a clean saucepan, arrange the sliced beef and pour the gravy and onions over it.

  2. Let it sit for a while to absorb the flavor.

  3. Heat near the fire until thoroughly hot.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Red wine + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Button onions
Become sweet and tender as they brown and then simmer in the gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions, adding richness and browning.
Flour
Thickens the red wine and broth into a gravy as it cooks.
Red wine
Adds depth, acidity and color to the gravy.
Cooked beef
Main protein, gently reheated in the gravy until hot.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour to deep amber. Cooking flour in fat until it darkens develops nutty, roasted flavor and color, and it must be stirred constantly so it does not scorch. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste in the gravy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, red wine, pepper, beef):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, red wine, pepper, 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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