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Hash on Toast

A dish of chopped beefsteak served over toast with butter, water, flour, and garnished with hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hash on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hash

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped beefsteak and water, cooking until heated through.

  3. Stir in the flour to thicken the mixture.

Serve

  1. Moisten the toast with hot water and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Pour the hash over the toast arranged on a platter.

  3. Garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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

Cold beefsteak
Forms the main body of the hash, providing protein and savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the hash brown and taste rich.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the hash holds together rather than running off the toast.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour needs to be cooked and mixed evenly into the hot liquid, otherwise it can clump and leave floury pockets. Stirring while it heats lets the starch swell smoothly and thicken the hash evenly.

“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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