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Beef, Hashed

A dish of sliced roast beef cooked with onions, bacon, butter, and Spanish and tomato sauces, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Beef, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the diced bacon and sliced onions, and fry until light brown.

  3. Lay the slices of beef in the pan.

  4. Pour the Spanish and tomato sauces over the beef.

  5. Cook slowly for 30 minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with fried bread croutons.

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 + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 meat that becomes tender as it heats gently in the sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns in the fat.
Streaky bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the onion and the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of bacon and onion and adds richness.
Spanish sauce
Forms the main savoury sauce that moistens the beef.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and sweetness that brighten the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 30 minutes without boiling. Gentle heat keeps the beef tender and the sauce smooth, while a rolling boil can toughen the meat and cause the sauce to reduce unevenly or stick.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, butter, sauce):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, butter, sauce. 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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