Name: Savoury Hash of Australian Meat
Ingredients: 3 pounds tender steak, cut evenly and 1½ inches thick; 1 small onion, finely chopped; 1 shallot, finely chopped; 1-2 strips bacon or a slice of bacon, cut small

Why it works: Onion and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,431 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Savoury Hash of Australian Meat

Ingredients

3 pounds tender steak, cut evenly and 1½ inches thick
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 shallot, finely chopped
1-2 strips bacon or a slice of bacon, cut small

Directions

Cook the hash

Fry the onion and shallot with the bacon in a pan until softened.
Add the steak to the pan and cook until browned.
Simmer gently for 1.5 hours, ensuring it does not boil.

Serve

Serve with additional potatoes if needed.

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.

Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as its connective tissue breaks down during slow simmering.
Onion: Softens as it cooks, adding sweetness and savory aroma to the base of the hash.
Shallot: Adds a mild, delicate onion flavor that deepens as it softens in the pan.
Bacon: Renders fat into the pan, carrying savory flavor into the onions and meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling tightens the meat fibers and toughens the steak. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue slowly break down, leaving the meat tender over the 1.5 hours.

“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.

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Yorkshire Pudding264 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Savoury Hash of Australian Meat