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Hashed Beef or Mutton

A broth made by simmering beef or mutton with bones, gristle, skin, trimmings, onion, pepper, salt, and water.

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 bones, gristle, skin, and trimmings with enough water to cover.

  2. Add the sliced onion, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  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 from the top.

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 is sliced and gently warmed in the gravy.
Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the long simmered liquid, giving body to the stock.
Gravy from the joint
Keeps the sliced meat moist and adds concentrated meaty flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma to the simmering stock.

The step that matters

Boil gently for at least two hours. A gentle simmer extracts gelatin and flavour from the bones without emulsifying fat into the liquid. A hard boil makes the stock cloudy and greasy, so keep the surface barely moving.

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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