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Hashed Beef a LA Francaise

A dish of sliced cold beef sautéed with onion, flour, stock, and seasonings, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hashed Beef a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a chafing dish and add the onion.

  2. Stir in the flour, cooking until pale brown.

  3. Add the stock and seasonings, cooking for two minutes.

  4. Cut the meat into thin slices and add to the chafing dish.

  5. Allow the mixture to heat thoroughly 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the sauce until heated through.
Butter
Carries the onion and flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks in the butter.
Gravy or stock
Provides the liquid that turns the flour into a sauce and moistens the beef.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until pale brown. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred and cooked long enough to lose its raw taste, but not so long that it darkens and loses thickening power.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, nutmeg. 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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