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To Hash Beef

Thin slices of beef simmered until tender, then served in a thickened gravy flavoured with port wine and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Hash Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Hang the raw beef until tender, then cut into thin slices.

  2. Place the slices in a stewpan with enough water to cover them, sweet herbs, onion, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cover the stewpan and simmer until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Add port wine and eschalot vinegar, then warm the mixture.

  2. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve to remove herbs and vegetables.

  3. Return the sauce to the saucepan with the beef and thicken with butter kneaded in flour and brown sugar.

Finish with cold beef

  1. If using cold beef, mince shallot and onion, then fry in butter.

  2. Add flour, gravy, and walnut liquor or ketchup, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the thin slices of beef and heat through without boiling.

  4. Optionally, add sliced potatoes and onions.

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

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

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

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

  3. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Slow simmering in water turns the tough raw meat tender and gives the sauce its savoury body.
Butter and flour
Kneaded together, they form a roux-style paste that thickens the sauce to a coating consistency.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Eschalot vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and brightens the flavour of the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling. Once the thin beef slices go back into the sauce, boiling would toughen the meat and make it stringy. Gentle heating keeps it tender while warming it through.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, port wine, vinegar, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, port wine, vinegar, butter, flour, sugar. 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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