Name: A Fine Hash
Ingredients: cold game or poultry; best quality sausages; bread crumbs; chopped onions; chopped parsley; 2 or 3 hard-boiled egg yolks; butter; flour; broth, gravy, or warm water

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

A Fine Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the cold game or poultry and sausages together.
Mix in bread crumbs, chopped onions, chopped parsley, and the yolks of hard-boiled eggs.
In a saucepan, combine the mixture with a piece of butter rolled in flour.
Moisten with broth, gravy, or warm water.
Let it stew gently for 30 minutes.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, egg, butter, flour):

Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, egg, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.