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To Hash Beef

A dish of minced beef cooked with onion, vinegar, and gravy, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Hash Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a saucepan, boil chopped onion or shallot with a little water, pepper, and salt until soft.

Make the hash

  1. Add gravy from the meat and minced meat; do not let it boil.

  2. Mix in vinegar before serving.

Serve

  1. Prepare a small hot dish with slices of bread and pour the minced meat over 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  3. Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion or shallot
Softened by boiling, it adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the hash.
Minced meat
Forms the main body of the hash, giving it substance and savoury flavour.
Gravy from cooked meat
Adds moisture and meaty flavour so the hash does not dry out.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidic note that brightens the rich meat and gravy.
Sippets of bread
Soaks up the meat juices and gives the dish a soft base to rest on.

The step that matters

Keep the minced meat from boiling. Boiling toughens the meat proteins and makes them dry and grainy, so the mixture should be heated gently once the gravy is added.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, meat, vinegar, bread):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, meat, vinegar, 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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