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Pork, Hashed

A pork hash made by simmering sliced pork with onion, mace, and spices, thickened with roux and mushroom ketchup, served with apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pork, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Combine the bones and trimmings from the pork, sliced onion, clove, mace, salt, pepper, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Stew gently for at least 1 hour, then skim and strain the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with brown roux or flour and butter mixed with mushroom ketchup.

Heat and serve

  1. Add the sliced pork to the gravy and heat gently for about 20 minutes without boiling.

  2. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with toasted sippets.

  3. Provide apple sauce in a tureen.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Cold roast pork
Forms the meat of the dish, gently warmed through in the finished gravy.
Brown roux
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, savoury depth as it binds the liquid.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour to the gravy as it stews.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the thickened gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the pork without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat and makes it dry and stringy, so the sliced pork should be warmed gently in the simmering-hot gravy rather than brought to a rolling boil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, mushroom, onion, clove, pepper, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, mushroom, onion, clove, pepper, butter. 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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