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To Make a Good Hash

A savory stock made from bones, vegetables, and seasonings, simmered and strained to produce a flavorful broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Make a Good Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the bones, skin, and gristle in water for 1-2 inches deep with chopped onion, peppercorns, and vegetables.

  2. Add any game bones if available and simmer gently for at least an hour with the lid on.

  3. Strain the mixture into a basin and let it cool to allow the fat to settle.

Finish the gravy

  1. Skim off the fat and add sauces, vinegar, red currant jelly, salt, and pepper to taste.

  2. Adjust the flavor with pickles, capers, chutney, or wine if desired.

  3. Thicken and brown the gravy as needed, ensuring it is neither too thick nor too thin.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Bones, skin, and gristle
Release gelatin and body into the liquid, giving the gravy richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as it cooks.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory background flavor to the stock.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and rounds out the stock's flavor.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the savory gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the gravy.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after cooling. Fat that is not removed before finishing stays on the surface and makes the gravy greasy. Chilling the strained liquid lets the fat rise and set so it lifts off cleanly.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, celery, carrot, turnip, ketchup, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, celery, carrot, turnip, ketchup, vinegar. 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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