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Hashed Meats

A dish of sautéed onions and sliced cooked meat simmered in water, served over toasted bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashed Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hash

  1. Combine the chopped onions, water, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the cooked meat, floured with the tablespoon of flour, to the saucepan and stir the mixture.

  4. Boil for another 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the hash into a deep dish containing slices of 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they simmer, forming the flavour base of the hash.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the hash becomes a binding sauce around the meat.
Cooked meat
Provides the main substance and savoury flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the floured meat to the simmering liquid. Flour dusted on meat must be stirred in evenly while the liquid is hot; otherwise it clumps into lumps instead of thickening the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, meat, 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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