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Hashing and Mincing

A beef hash with pickles, walnuts or onions, shallots, butter, veal stock, ketchup, cayenne pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hashing and Mincing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut dressed beef into thin slices.

  2. Place beef in a stewpan with slices of pickles and either walnuts or onions.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, cook chopped shallots or onions in fresh butter over low heat until nearly done.

  2. Add 2 cups of veal stock or gravy and a little ketchup to the shallots or onions.

  3. Boil for ten minutes.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Strain the sauce over the beef.

Stew and serve

  1. Let it stew gently until thoroughly hot.

  2. Add a small quantity of browning before serving.

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. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it stews gently in the sauce.
Fresh butter
Cooks the shallots or onions gently, adding richness and a mellow, sweet flavour to the sauce.
Veal stock or gravy
Provides the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and body.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that brightens and deepens the sauce.
Shallots or onions
Build the aromatic base of the sauce as they soften and sweeten in butter.

The step that matters

Let it stew gently until thoroughly hot. Gentle heat lets the beef warm through and soften without tightening its proteins, which keeps it tender while the sauce thickens and flavours it.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, butter, veal, ketchup, pepper. 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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