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Trench Receipt for Hashed Bouilli

A French dish of beef slices simmered in a butter‑flour sauce with onion, parsley, and seasonings, finished with egg yolks and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Trench Receipt for Hashed Bouilli

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add the flour and simmer for 1 minute.

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

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  5. Pour in the boiling water or bouillon.

Finish the hash

  1. Add the beef slices and heat gradually without boiling.

  2. When near boiling, thicken the sauce with the egg yolks mixed with lemon juice.

  3. For a variation, omit the eggs and add catsup and pickled 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
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour as the base for cooking the onion.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy texture when gently heated.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in the butter.
Beef
Provides the main meat, heated gently in the sauce so it stays tender.

The step that matters

Thickening with the egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so they can curdle or scramble if the sauce boils. Mix them with lemon juice and add them near boiling, off the heat, and keep stirring for a smooth, thickened sauce.

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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