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Hashed Beef, Plain

A simple dish of sliced beef sautéed with onion, Harvey sauce, mushroom ketchup, and broth, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hashed Beef, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Season the sliced beef with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Sprinkle the seasoned beef with flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the chopped onion, Harvey sauce, and mushroom ketchup in a stewpan.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 minutes.

  3. Add the broth or gravy.

  4. Boil down to half its quantity.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the beef.

  2. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Serve with toasted bread slices around 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Thinly sliced beef
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Flour
Coats the beef and thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Chopped onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the stewpan.
Broth or gravy
Provides the liquid base that reduces into the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil down to half its quantity. Reducing the liquid concentrates its flavour and thickens it. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce thin and weak, while boiling too hard can scorch it on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour, sauce, mushroom, 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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