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Hashed Beef, and Broiled Bones

A dish of diced sirloin and bone marrow, simmered with onions, vinegar, stock, and thickened with butter and flour, served with broiled bones.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef 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 ↓

Hashed Beef, and Broiled Bones

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beef and bones

  1. Cut the fillet into small pieces.

  2. Cut the bones into neat sections, leaving meat on them.

  3. Score the fillet and bones.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Place in a tart pan with oiled butter.

  6. Warm the bones in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until heated through.

  7. Brown the bones on a grill.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine meat trimmings, bones, onions, vinegar, and stock.

  2. Boil slowly for at least an hour.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Skim off the fat.

  5. Melt butter in a stewpan.

  6. Add flour and stir for 1-2 minutes.

  7. Gradually add the strained liquid, stirring until it boils.

  8. Add ketchup.

  9. Return the beef to the sauce, keeping it warm without boiling.

  10. Season if needed.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef with the broiled bones arranged around it.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  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

Fillet
Provides the tender, mild-flavoured meat that is the main part of the dish.
Bones with meat attached
Add meaty flavour to the dish and, as they simmer, gelatin that gives body to the stock.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce as they cook slowly.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the beef flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the sauce roux and for cooking the meat.

The step that matters

Return the beef to the sauce without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat proteins and can make them dry and stringy, so the beef should be kept warm just below a simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, butter, vinegar, beef, flour, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, vinegar, beef, flour, ketchup. 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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