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Hash Sauce

A sauce made from mushroom catsup, shallot wine, walnut pickle, browning, and spices, boiled and strained for warming meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hash Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a bowl, mix mushroom catsup, shallot wine, walnut pickle, and browning.

  2. For longer preservation, add soup-herb spirit.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter over medium heat until brown.

  2. Stir in flour and mix thoroughly.

  3. Add black pepper, allspice, soup-herb powder, salt, and hash sauce.

  4. Pour in boiling water and let it boil gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain through a sieve and use to warm meat.

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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns with the flour to build a rich, nutty flavour base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat instead of running off.
Mushroom catsup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour that forms the backbone of the sauce.
Walnut pickle
Contributes a sharp, tangy flavour that balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter with flour. Butter cooked until brown and then mixed with flour forms a roux, which thickens the liquid. If the butter burns or the flour is not stirred in well, the sauce turns bitter or lumpy.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, shallot, wine, spirit, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, shallot, wine, spirit, butter, flour, pepper. 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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