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Beef, Hashed

A savory dish of diced beef simmered with onions, turnip, carrot, and gravy, served with beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Drain the beef.

  2. Dry the beef beside the fire with the saucepan lid slightly raised.

  3. Cut the beef into neat squares.

  4. Roll the squares in flour.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 oz. of butter.

  2. Add pepper and salt to the butter.

  3. Fry the sliced onion in the butter until browned.

  4. Add the diced turnip and carrot to the onions.

  5. Mix the beef stock smoothly with the ground rice and flour.

  6. Add the mixture to the saucepan.

  7. Stir in the Harvey's sauce.

  8. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the beef to the sauce.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve the beef and gravy in the center with beans arranged around it.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein; dried and floured squares brown and hold their shape in the gravy.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onion and adds richness and browning to the base.
Onion
Browned in butter to build savoury depth and sweetness in the base.
Ground rice and flour
Thicken the beef stock into a gravy that clings to the beef and vegetables.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid of the gravy and carries the savoury flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Roll the beef squares in flour. A light, even coating of flour helps the beef brown slightly and gives the sauce something to cling to, so the gravy thickens smoothly instead of splitting or going thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, pepper, turnip, carrot, rice, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, pepper, turnip, carrot, rice, flour. 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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