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Hashed Beef or Mutton — Plain

A simple dish of browned meat and gravy made from beef or mutton bones, onions, herbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Hashed Beef or Mutton — Plain

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Break the meat bones into small pieces.

  2. Stew the bones in a little water with onions and sweet herbs; strain the mixture.

Make the hash

  1. In a frying pan, melt a lump of butter rolled in flour until browned.

  2. Add the strained gravy and the seasoned meat to the fried butter.

  3. Heat gently and serve warm.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

  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

Meat bones
Stewing them releases flavour and body into the gravy.
Butter
Browned with flour, it adds nutty aroma and richness to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked in the butter, it thickens the gravy and gives it body.
Onions
Stewed with the bones, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the flour in butter until browned builds flavour and thickens the gravy evenly. Stopping too early leaves a raw floury taste, while over-browning can taste bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, pepper, 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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