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Hashed Meat

A savory dish of sliced cold meat simmered with onions, turnip, herbs, flour, catsup, bread, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Hashed Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold meat into thin slices.

  2. Chop the bones into pieces and place in a saucepan.

  3. Peel and quarter one onion.

  4. Wash, tie the herbs together to form a bouquet garni.

  5. Wash, scrape, and quarter the turnip.

Make the stock

  1. Add the herbs and vegetables to the saucepan with the bones.

  2. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste, then cover and simmer gently for 1.5 hours, or 30 minutes if using pre-made stock.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat scraps
Provide the main protein and meaty flavor of the hash.
Onions
Add aromatic depth and mild sweetness as they soften and cook.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the hash a body that holds together.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and aiding browning.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil hard. A vigorous boil breaks up fat and proteins, making the stock cloudy and greasy and toughening the meat. A gentle simmer keeps the liquid clear and the meat tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, parsley, thyme, marjoram, flour, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, parsley, thyme, marjoram, flour, mushroom. 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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