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Hashing and Mincing Beef

A stew of thinly sliced beef with pickles, onions, and a savory sauce of butter, stock, ketchup, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hashing and Mincing Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Place the sliced beef in a stewpan with pickle slices and either walnuts or onions.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt fresh butter and sauté chopped shallots or onions until nearly done.

  2. Add 1 pint of veal stock or gravy and a little ketchup to the sautéed mixture.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, then season with Cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stew and serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the beef and let it stew gently until thoroughly hot.

  2. Add a small quantity of browning before serving.

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. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 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 body of the hash, becoming tender as it stews in the sauce.
Fresh butter
Fat that softens the shallots or onions and carries their flavour into the sauce.
Veal stock or gravy
Liquid base that gives the sauce its body and savoury depth.
Chopped shallots or onions
Sweetness and aromatic flavour once softened in butter.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently after straining the sauce over the beef. Boiling hard at this stage can toughen the beef and make the sauce reduce or break unevenly. A gentle stew heats the meat through while keeping it tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, shallot, butter, veal, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, butter, veal, ketchup, pepper. 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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