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French Hash

A savory hash made with cold meat, onion, butter, flour, and pork gravy, finished with a raw egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hash

  1. Brown the chopped onion in butter or drippings in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cold meat and brown it slightly.

  3. Stir in the dried flour until it is browned.

  4. Cover the meat with pork gravy or boiling water and bring to a boil.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the raw egg yolk just before serving.

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 + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 meat
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it its main savory flavor as it browns.
Dried flour
Browns with the meat and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Raw egg yolk
Stirred in off the heat, it enriches the sauce and adds richness and body.

The step that matters

Stir in the raw egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens and enriches through gentle heat. Added while the mixture is boiling, it can scramble into small curds, so it is stirred in after removing the pan from the heat, just before serving.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, pork, pepper, egg. 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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