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Indian Hash

A stew of sliced mutton or beef simmered in stock with butter, lemon, and mustard yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Indian Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hash

  1. Combine the meat and stock in a stewpan.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and mace.

  3. Add butter and lemon.

  4. Cover the stewpan.

  5. Simmer for 10 minutes without boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Grate the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into a small bowl.

  2. Mix the grated yolks with mustard and some gravy until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture back into the stewpan.

  4. Remove the lemon.

  5. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  6. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Mutton or beef
Forms the body of the hash, providing the savoury meat base.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken the gravy as they emulsify into a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a rounder mouthfeel.
Made mustard
Adds sharp pungency that cuts the richness of the meat and eggs.

The step that matters

Simmering without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the egg-yolk mixture grainy or split, so the stewpan should stay at a gentle simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, butter, lemon, egg, mustard):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, butter, lemon, egg, mustard. 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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