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Hash of Game

Hash of Game is game meat with onion, pepper, lemon peel, salt, water or stock, butter and flour, wine, lemon juice, ketchup, served toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Hash of Game

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. In a stewpan, combine the game pieces, onion, pepper, lemon peel, salt, and water or stock.

  2. Stew for about 1 hour, then strain the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

  4. Add the wine, lemon juice, and ketchup.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the game pieces to the pan and warm them by the side of the fire without boiling.

  2. When just simmering, serve and garnish with toasted 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Game pieces
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long stew.
Butter and flour
Thicken the strained gravy so it coats the meat and bread.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich gravy.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Warming the game without boiling. Once the meat is returned, boiling can toughen the proteins and make it dry and stringy. Holding the gravy just below a simmer keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, butter, flour, wine, ketchup, bread. 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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