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Hachis Cle Boeuf — Hashed Beef

A French-style hashed beef made with onions, butter, flour, stock, wine, mustard, vinegar, and minced beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hachis Cle Boeuf — Hashed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion base

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Add chopped onions.

  3. Cook until nearly done and browned.

  4. Stir in flour.

  5. Moisten with stock and wine.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the beef and serve

  1. Let the mixture stew until thick and little sauce remains.

  2. Add minced cold beef.

  3. Simmer until it absorbs the onion flavor.

  4. Serve with mustard and vinegar.

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 + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Onions
Cooked until browned, they build the sweet, savory flavor base of the dish.
Flour
Stirred into the fat, it thickens the liquid into a stable sauce.
Beef
Provides the meat that the sauce clings to and absorbs flavor from during simmering.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stock, deepening the sauce's flavor.
Butter
Carries the onions as they cook and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stew until thick. Stewing reduces the liquid so the flour-thickened sauce becomes dense enough to coat the beef. Stopping early leaves it thin and watery, while over-reducing can make it pasty.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, wine, pepper, vinegar, beef):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, wine, pepper, vinegar, beef. 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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