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Hashed Cold Meat

A hash of sliced cold meat served with a gravy made from bones, onion, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Stew the bones in a little water with the onion, salt, pepper, and savory herbs if desired.

  2. Once the flavor is extracted, thicken the gravy with corn starch.

  3. If the gravy is weak, add a bit of butter.

Warm and serve

  1. Place the stewpan on the hot hearth and add the slices of meat.

  2. Warm the meat without boiling.

  3. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the gravy as it heats, giving it body so it clings to the meat.
Bones
Release flavor and gelatin into the water, forming the base of the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to a gravy that tastes weak.
Slices of cold meat
Are the main food being warmed through in the gravy.

The step that matters

Warm the meat without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat by tightening its proteins and driving out moisture, so gentle heat keeps the slices tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, corn, butter, meat, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, corn, butter, meat, bread. 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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