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To Hash Cold Beef or Mutton

A hash made from cooked beef or mutton, onions, ketchup, flour, and a seasoned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 gravy

  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 one hour, then remove the bones.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour, season with pepper and salt, and stir until boiling.

  5. Let the gravy cool slightly before adding the meat.

Heat and serve

  1. Heat very slowly, but do not boil after adding the meat.

  2. Once hot, serve the hash and decorate with small triangular pieces of dry toasted bread around the 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and savory flavor of the hash.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the meat.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the stewed gravy.

The step that matters

Heat very slowly after adding the meat, without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat fibers and can make them dry and stringy, while gentle heating warms the meat through and keeps it tender and juicy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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