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An Excellent Hash of Cold Beef

A hash made from cold beef simmered in broth with herbs, onions, and spices, finished with ketchup and served with toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

An Excellent Hash of Cold Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a thick saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced herbs and chopped onion or eschalots; cook until lightly browned.

  3. Stir in the flour, cayenne, mace or nutmeg, and salt; cook until well colored.

  4. Pour in the broth or gravy and let it boil gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture, then add the mushroom or compound ketchup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cold beef and keep it warm by the fire until heated through, but do not let it boil.

  2. Place fried or toasted sippets in a hot dish and serve the hash immediately.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onion or eschalots
Softens and browns, adding savoury sweetness and depth to the base.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a gravy that clings to the beef.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and flavour to the base.
Broth or gravy
Forms the liquid body of the hash, carrying all the flavours.
Mushroom or compound ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Keep the hash below a boil once the beef is added. Cold beef is already cooked, so it only needs gentle heating. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the thickened sauce separate or scorch, so the hash should stay hot but not bubbling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, pepper, mushroom. 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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