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An Excellent Hash of Cold Beef

A hash made from cold beef, simmered with herbs, onion, flour, spices, broth, ketchup, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. 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 shallots; 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.

Heat and serve

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

  2. Serve in a very hot dish, garnished with fried or toasted bread.

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. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  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

Cold beef
Is the main protein, gently reheated in the sauce so it stays tender.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps it brown when cooked in the butter.
Onion or shallots
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as they brown in the butter.
Broth or gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory depth as it simmers.
Mushroom or compound ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the beef without boiling. Boiling the sauce once the beef is added can toughen the meat and make the sauce separate or turn stringy, so it should be kept hot but below a boil.

Swap the mace

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

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

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