Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
To Hash Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Place the slices of raw beef in a stew pan with water, catsup, pepper, and salt.
Stew until the beef is cooked through.
Thicken the gravy by rubbing butter into brown flour and adding it to the pan.
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.
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Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,847 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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
- Brown flour
- Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
- Butter
- Rubbed into the flour, it coats the flour particles so they blend smoothly into the gravy.
- Catsup
- Adds sweetness and acidity to the cooking liquid, flavouring the gravy.
- Slices of raw beef
- The main protein, cooked through by stewing in the liquid.
The step that matters
Thicken the gravy by rubbing butter into brown flour. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Rubbing it with butter first coats each particle with fat, so it disperses evenly and thickens the gravy smoothly.
“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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