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Hashed Beef and Tomato Sauce

A dish of sliced roast beef simmered in a tomato sauce made from butter, herbs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashed Beef and Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Slice the tomatoes and place them in a saucepan with the butter, herbs, pepper, salt, sugar, and gravy.

  2. Stir until it becomes a pulp, then rub through a sieve and season to taste.

  3. Let it cool completely.

Heat and serve

  1. Cut the beef into thin slices and place in a saucepan.

  2. Pour the cold sauce over the beef and heat very slowly until warmed through.

  3. Arrange on a hot dish and garnish with fried bread snippets or toast.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meaty base.
Tomatoes
Supply acidity and bulk, and when pulped they thicken the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Gravy
Adds savoury depth and moisture to the tomato sauce.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Heat the beef very slowly. Gentle heating keeps the thin beef slices tender and moist. High heat toughens the meat proteins and dries the slices, and it can make the sauce separate or scorch.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, 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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