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Hash, Common

A mutton hash simmered with onion, mushroom ketchup, and stock, garnished with toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hash, Common

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Season the mutton slices with salt and pepper, then dredge with flour.

  2. Stew the minced onion in the stock or water for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the mushroom ketchup to the onion mixture.

  4. Add the mutton pieces and stew gently for 2-3 minutes until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish and garnish with toasted sippets.

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 + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that is cooked briefly until tender in the sauce.
Flour
Coats the mutton slices and thickens the sauce as it stews.
Onion
Softens into the stock, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the mutton gently after adding it. Gentle heat keeps the thin mutton slices tender and prevents the flour-thickened sauce from scorching or turning lumpy. Stew briefly, since thin meat toughens and dries with prolonged cooking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup. 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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