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French Receipt for Hashed Boullli

A French boiled beef hash made with butter, flour, onion, parsley, spices, water or bouillon, and optional eggs, catsup, and gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Receipt for Hashed Boullli

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir for 1 minute until combined.

  3. Stir in the onion and parsley, cooking until browned.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Cook the hash

  1. Add the boiling water or bouillon and the beef slices.

  2. Heat gradually until near boiling.

  3. Mix the egg yolks with lemon juice and thicken the sauce.

  4. For variation, omit the eggs and add catsup and gherkins.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the base of the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as it heats and add richness.
Beef
Provides the main protein and meaty substance of the hash.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma when cooked until browned.

The step that matters

Heat gradually until near boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the mixture boils too hard or heats too fast, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, beef):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, 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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