Name: Hashed Meat on Toast
Ingredients: 2 cups chopped meat; ½ pint soup stock, gravy, or boiling water; 1 tablespoon butter; Salt and pepper to taste; 6 small slices of bread

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hashed Meat on Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

2 cups chopped meat
½ pint soup stock, gravy, or boiling water
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to taste
6 small slices of bread

Directions

Make the hash

Combine chopped meat, soup stock, and melted butter in a stew pan. Season with salt and pepper.
Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Toast and serve

Toast the bread slices until golden brown.
Arrange the toasted bread on a warm platter. Spread the hash mixture over the toast and 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 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

Chopped meat: Forms the main body of the hash and provides savory flavor.
Soup stock: Adds moisture so the meat simmers tender rather than drying out.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the hash.
Bread: Toasting browns the surface and gives a crisp base to hold the hash.

“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.