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Hashed Beef, Plain

A simple hash of thinly sliced beef, onions, and seasonings, simmered in broth and 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. Slice the beef into very thin pieces.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then sprinkle flour over it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine chopped onion, Harvey sauce, and mushroom ketchup; boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Add broth or gravy and boil down to half its quantity.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the beef and boil for 5 more minutes.

  2. Serve with toasted bread 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

Beef
Provides the main meat texture and savory flavor of the hash.
Flour
Lightly coats the beef and thickens the liquid as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Broth or gravy
Supplies the liquid base, and reducing it concentrates flavor and body.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the broth down to half its quantity. Reducing concentrates the flavor and thickens the liquid. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce thin and bland, while over-reducing can make it salty and too thick once the beef is added.

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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