Skip to main content
Main

Veal Hash

A veal hash made with butter, cream, and flour, served hot over toasted buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Hash

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the chopped veal, salt, and pepper; cook until heated through.

  3. Stir in the cream or milk.

  4. Dust in flour to thicken the gravy.

  5. Serve hot over toasted and buttered bread.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Veal
Forms the main body of the hash, cooked until heated through.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan, carrying flavor through the dish.
Cream or milk
Provides liquid and richness that combine with the flour to form the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Dust in flour to thicken the gravy. Flour must be stirred in evenly so it hydrates and thickens the liquid smoothly; added in clumps, it stays lumpy and uneven.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, pepper, cream, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, pepper, cream, flour. 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.

More veal hash recipes

You might also like