Name: Veal Hash on Toast
Ingredients: 1 teacup boiling water; 1 teaspoon flour; 1 tablespoon cold water; ½ teaspoon black pepper; Coarse sea salt to taste; 2 tablespoons butter; Chopped veal (amount as desired); Stale bread crumbs (half the amount of veal)

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 ↓

Veal Hash on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

In a saucepan, combine boiling water and flour mixed with cold water, then boil for 5 minutes.
Add black pepper, salt, and butter. Keep hot but do not boil.

Make and serve the hash

Chop the veal finely and mix with half as much stale bread crumbs.
Place the mixture in a pan and pour the gravy over it.
Simmer for 10 minutes.
Serve the veal hash on buttered toast.

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).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,056 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour: Thickens the boiling water into a smooth gravy as its starch swells.
Butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the gravy.
Stale bread crumbs: Absorb the gravy and bind the chopped veal into a soft hash.
Veal: Provides the main meat and savoury flavour of the hash.

The step that matters

Keep the gravy hot but do not boil it. Once the butter is added, a rolling boil can cause the fat to separate and the gravy to turn greasy and grainy. Gentle heat keeps it smooth and pourable.

“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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Veal Hash on Toast