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Beef Hashed, a LA Francaise

A beef hash with butter, flour, onion, parsley, nutmeg, water, and a lemon-egg yolk 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 Francaise

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; cook until browned.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

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

  6. Heat gradually until near boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the egg yolks with lemon juice and thicken the sauce before serving.

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
Provides the main meat and savoury body of the hash.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness when gently heated.
Flour
Combined with the butter, it thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Onion
Adds sweetness and depth when cooked until browned.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the sauce gets too hot they can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and add the yolk mixture off the boil.

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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