Name: Hashed Beef
Ingredients: beef; 1 onion; ½ cup water or stock; 2 tablespoons flour; ketchup; other sauce; bread or toast sippets

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

Cut the beef into slices.
Place it in a saucepan with the onion and water or stock, and let it simmer.

Thicken and serve

Add flour to thicken, along with ketchup and sauce, then simmer for 15 minutes.
Serve with bread or toast snippets.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,435 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,676 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

Flour: Thickens the liquid into a sauce that clings to the beef.
Beef: Provides the main protein and savoury body of the hash.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits about as well
Onionthe original

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