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Hashed Beef or Mutton

A hash of thinly sliced beef or mutton simmered in a broth made from the joint's bones, gristle, skin, and trimmings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Hashed Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat into thin slices, trimming off gristle, skin, and brown outsides.

  2. Place the meat slices in a clean dish and pour the saved gravy over them.

Make the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped bones, gristle, skin, and trimmings, and cover with water.

  2. Add the sliced onion, pepper, and salt to the saucepan.

  3. Boil gently for at least two hours.

  4. Strain the liquid into a bowl and place the bowl in cold water.

  5. Once the liquid is cold, remove the layer of fat.

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Provides the meat that gives the hash its main body and savory flavor.
Gravy from the joint
Adds moisture and concentrated meaty flavor to the sliced meat.
Bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, enriching the liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Boil gently for at least two hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin from bones without emulsifying fat into the liquid. A hard boil makes the stock cloudy and greasy, so keep it at a bare simmer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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