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Hash Balls

Hash balls are a dish of leftover beef mixed with potatoes, bread crumbs or rice, seasoned, and cooked in fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Hash Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the leftover beef finely.

  2. Mix the chopped beef with potatoes, bread crumbs, or rice.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, and add enough water or soup to make it moist.

Cook

  1. Heat butter or beef fat in a skillet.

  2. Add the mixture to the skillet, cover, and steam until heated through.

  3. Remove the cover and let it dry out until a brown crust forms on the bottom.

  4. Alternatively, form the mixture into small cakes, dust with flour, and fry in beef dripping until golden brown.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover cooked beef
Provides the main meat flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Chopped or mashed potatoes
Adds body and moisture, helping the mixture hold together while cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the mixture into a cohesive mass.
Butter or beef fat
Conducts heat in the skillet and promotes browning of the crust.
Flour
Dusted on the cakes, it helps create a golden, browned surface when fried.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture dry out for the brown crust. Covered steaming heats the mixture through, but a brown crust only forms once the cover is removed and surface moisture evaporates. Browning depends on dry heat, so leaving it covered too long leaves the bottom pale and soft.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, rice, pepper, butter, 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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