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Hashed Beef, Plain

Hashed Beef, Plain is a dish of thinly sliced beef cooked with onion, sauces, and broth, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hashed Beef, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season thinly sliced beef with pepper, coarse sea salt, and flour.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine chopped onion, Harvey sauce, and mushroom ketchup; boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Add broth or gravy and boil until reduced to half its quantity.

  3. Stir in the beef and boil for an additional 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted bread around the dish.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Thinly sliced beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers briefly in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid slightly as it coats the beef and reduces.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the stewpan.
Broth or gravy
Forms the liquid base, concentrating in flavour as it reduces by half.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth or gravy. Boiling until it is reduced to half its quantity concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce. Too little reduction leaves it thin and watery, while over-reducing can make it salty and overly intense.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, flour, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, 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.

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