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A Cheap General Sauce for Hashes of Beef and Mutton

A sauce made by boiling beef or mutton bones with aromatics, thickened with browned flour, and seasoned with optional condiments.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

A Cheap General Sauce for Hashes of Beef and Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make a gravy by boiling broken bones and trimmings with onions, parsley, celery, herbs, and peppercorns.

  2. Strain the gravy and thicken it with browned flour.

  3. Season with any convenient and economical ingredients, such as pickle liquor, catsup, escalot vinegar, or curry powder.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Broken bones and trimmings
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the liquid as they simmer, giving the gravy body.
Browned flour
Thickens the strained gravy and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy as they cook down.
Black peppercorns
Contribute a sharp, aromatic heat to the simmering liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, celery, flour, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, celery, flour, vinegar. 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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