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Hashed Pork

A stew of sliced pork simmered with onions, vinegar, spices, and broth, served with gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hashed Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine onions, vinegar, cloves, mace, and bay leaf in a stewpan.

  2. Reduce the mixture to half.

  3. Remove the spices and bay leaf.

  4. Add broth or water.

Cook the pork and serve

  1. Season sliced pork with pepper and salt.

  2. Sprinkle pork with flour and mix well.

  3. Add the pork mixture to the stewpan.

  4. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  5. Serve on a dish with gherkin slices.

  6. Add mustard or piccalilli if desired.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour of the reduced sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it simmers, giving the pork a light body.
Cooked pork
Forms the main body of the dish, supplying the meat and savoury flavour.
Broth
Adds liquid and savoury depth to the sauce that the pork simmers in.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 10 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the flour-thickened sauce smooth and prevents it from scorching or breaking, while warming the already-cooked pork through.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar, clove, mace, pork, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, clove, mace, pork, pepper, 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.

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