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Cold Beef Hashed

A cold hash of thinly sliced beef, onion, sauce, ketchup, and stock, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup 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 ↓

Cold Beef Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the beef into very thin pieces and sprinkle a little flour over it.

Make the hash

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the chopped onion, sauce, and ketchup; boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the stock or gravy and boil down to half its quantity.

  3. Stir in the beef and boil for an additional 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with slices of bread around the dish.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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

Thinly sliced beef
Forms the main body of the hash and provides its meaty texture.
Flour
Dusted over the beef to help lightly thicken the sauce as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the pan.
Stock or gravy
Provides liquid for the sauce, and boiling it down concentrates its flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the stock or gravy down to half. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid. Reducing too far leaves the hash dry and salty, while too little leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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