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Hashed Beef or Mutton

A dish of sliced cooked beef or mutton simmered in a seasoned gravy served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashed Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the cooked meat into thin slices and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Remove skin, bones, and gristle from the meat.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt a bit of butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Add a little flour to the butter.

  3. Add a tablespoon of broth or water.

  4. Slice a couple of onions and brown them lightly in the stew-pan.

  5. Add the bones and unwanted meat pieces to the onions.

  6. Include a pickled onion or gherkin and a couple of sprigs of sweet herbs.

  7. Pour in enough water to cover and let it stew until a good gravy forms.

  8. Strain the gravy and season with ketchup, tomato sauce, or vinegar.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the sliced meat in the stew-pan and simmer just to warm the meat through.

  2. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

Cooked beef or mutton
Provides the main body of the dish, warmed gently so it stays tender in the gravy.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the pan and enriches the gravy with fat.
Flour
Added to the butter to start thickening the gravy.
Onions
Browned lightly to add sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Ketchup or tomato sauce or vinegar
Adds acidity and tang that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Letting the gravy stew until it forms. Simmering the bones, onions and herbs in water slowly extracts gelatin and flavour; too short a stew gives a thin, weak gravy, while boiling hard can make the meat tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter, flour, ketchup, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, flour, ketchup, bread. 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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