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An Excellent Hash of Cold Beef

A hash of cold beef simmered with butter, herbs, onion, flour, spices, broth, and mushroom ketchup, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. 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; cook until lightly browned.

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

  4. Pour in the broth or gravy and let it boil gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture, then add the mushroom ketchup.

Heat and serve

  1. Add the cold beef and keep it warm by the fire until heated through, but do not let it boil.

  2. Serve in a hot dish, garnished with fried or toasted bread.

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. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Cold beef
Is the main protein, heated gently in the sauce until warmed through.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, stable sauce as it cooks with the fat.
Broth or gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavors.
Onion or shallots
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as they brown in the butter.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep, savory umami flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the beef below a boil once it goes in. Boiling toughens cooked meat and can make the sauce separate or turn grainy, so the beef should only warm slowly until heated through.

Swap the mace

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

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

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