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Hash, Superior

A savory hash of button onions simmered in broth with lemon juice and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hash, Superior

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onions

  1. Peel the button onions and dredge them with flour.

  2. Fry the onions in butter until they are brightly browned.

  3. Pour the broth over the onions, then add salt, pepper, lemon juice, and mushroom ketchup or stewed mushrooms.

  4. Simmer gently until the onions are quite tender.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over slices of meat and keep warm until serving.

  2. Heat the contents of the dish in a saucepan until hot but not boiling.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Button onions
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender bulk during simmering.
Butter
Fats the onions for frying, helping them brown richly.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy that the onions simmer in.
Flour (in the method)
Dredged onto the onions to help thicken the gravy and aid browning.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savory, umami flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the onions in butter until brightly browned. Browning develops deep flavor through the Maillard reaction, but the onions must be dry enough on the surface to brown rather than steam. Cook them in an open pan and avoid crowding.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, lemon, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon, 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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