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Hashed Bouilli

A boiled hash of beef, onion, parsley, and butter, thickened with egg yolks and lemon juice.

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 ↓

Hashed Bouilli

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the chopped onion and parsley, cooking until browned.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  5. Pour in the boiling water or bouillon.

Heat and finish

  1. Heat the beef slices gradually by the fire until near boiling.

  2. 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

Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that helps thicken the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, adding richness.
Beef
Provides the main substance of the dish, warmed gently in the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the onion and parsley flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the yolks.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the egg yolks mixed with lemon juice.. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot or boiling when they are added. Temper them with some hot sauce first and keep the heat low.

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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