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To Hash Cold Beef or Mutton

A hash made from cold roast beef or boiled mutton, onions, butter, Oswego flour, ketchup, and 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

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

  2. Place the bones in a stewpan with a little water and the sliced onion, then stew until the bones are tender and remove them.

Make the hash

  1. Add the meat to the stewpan and heat until hot.

  2. Thicken the mixture with Oswego and butter, then season with salt, pepper, and ketchup.

Serve

  1. Serve the hash and garnish with small triangular pieces of dry toasted bread around the edge.

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. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef or boiled mutton
Provides the meat that forms the body of the hash.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, giving the thickened mixture a smoother mouthfeel.
Oswego
Thickens the mixture as a starch, so the hash holds together rather than running loose.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that brighten the savoury meat.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with Oswego and butter. Starch needs heat to swell and thicken, and it can clump if added to liquid without being evenly dispersed first. Stirring as it heats gives a smooth, even body rather than lumps or a thin, watery hash.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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