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Poultry, Hashed

A hash of cold poultry pieces simmered with stock, onion, fat, butter, flour, and lemon, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Poultry, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Combine the fowl trimmings with 1 pint of stock in a stewpan and let them stew.

  2. Melt 1 ounce of dripping in a pan and fry the chopped onion until soft.

Cook the hash

  1. Add the fowl pieces to the pan, season with salt and pepper, and let them brown slightly.

  2. Mix ½ ounce of butter and ½ ounce of flour together, then add to the poultry.

  3. Gradually pour in the stock and let everything simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, moisten it with a little more stock or water and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fowl pieces and place them on a hot dish.

  2. Add a squeeze of lemon, skim off any fat, and strain the sauce over the dish.

  3. Serve with slices of toast around the dish.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 fowl or duck
Forms the main body of the dish and is gently warmed through in the sauce.
Onion
Softens during frying and adds savoury sweetness to the base of the sauce.
Butter and flour
Flour mixed with butter forms a roux that thickens the sauce as it simmers.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce, carrying flavour and setting its consistency as it reduces.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be mixed fully into the fat and cooked briefly before liquid is added; otherwise it stays lumpy or tastes raw. Gradual stock addition keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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