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To Hash Cold Beef or Mutton

A hash made from cold roast beef or boiled mutton, onions, flour, butter, pepper, salt, ketchup, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Hash Cold Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the meat from the bones into small pieces and set aside.

  2. Place the bones in a stew pan with a little water and the sliced onion.

  3. Stew for a short time, then remove the bones and add the meat.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the meat until hot, then thicken with flour and butter.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little ketchup.

  3. Serve the hash and arrange small triangular pieces of dry toasted bread around the inner edge of the dish.

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Cold roast beef
Provides the main meat, which is cut small and gently reheated in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce that coats the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour thicken the sauce smoothly.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stock made from the bones.
Ketchup
Adds tangy sweetness and acidity to season the hash.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and butter. Flour needs to be cooked into the fat and hot liquid to thicken smoothly; if added directly to hot liquid without mixing, it clumps. Heating the mixture lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

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