Skip to main content
Main

An Excellent Hash of Cold Beef

A hash made with cold beef, butter, herbs, onion, flour, spices, broth, ketchup, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 and cook until lightly browned.

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

  4. Pour in the broth or gravy and bring to a gentle boil.

  5. Simmer for 15 minutes, then strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the mushroom ketchup and the cold beef.

  2. Heat gently without boiling until warmed through.

  3. Place fried or toasted sippets in a hot dish.

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

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

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

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

  3. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

  5. 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

Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, coating sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the onion and herbs and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion or shallots
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it browns.
Broth or gravy
Forms the liquid base that the hash is built on.
Mushroom or compound ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the hash gently without boiling. Once the cold beef is added, boiling can toughen the meat's proteins and make it dry and stringy. Gentle heat warms it through while keeping it tender and moist.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes