Name: An Excellent Hash From Cold Poultry
Ingredients: cold poultry, cut into pieces; trimmings and bones from the poultry; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; 1 slice of lean ham; 1 small onion, sliced; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon flour; lemon juice, to taste

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

An Excellent Hash From Cold Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, combine the trimmings, bones, pepper, salt, ham, and onion.
Simmer for 30 minutes.
Thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

Finish and serve

Add the cut pieces of poultry to the saucepan.
Before serving, squeeze in lemon juice.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Butter: Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens it.
Flour: Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Cold poultry: Provides the main meat that becomes tender as it warms in the sauce.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the simmered broth.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked briefly in the butter before liquid is added or the sauce tastes raw and may form lumps. Stirring keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Okrafits better
Asparagusfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ham, butter, flour, lemon. 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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

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An Excellent Hash From Cold Poultry