Name: An Excellent Hash From Cold Poultry
Ingredients: cold poultry meat; trimmings and bones; ½ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 slice of lean ham; 1 small onion; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon flour; 1 tablespoon lemon juice

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 ↓

An Excellent Hash From Cold Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the meat into pieces.

Make the sauce

Place the trimmings and bones in a saucepan with pepper, salt, ham, and onion.
Simmer for 30 minutes.
Thicken with butter rolled in flour.

Finish and serve

Add the meat and heat through.
Before serving, squeeze in lemon juice.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 poultry meat: Forms the body of the hash and is gently reheated in the sauce.
Butter: Enriches the sauce and, rolled in flour, helps thicken it smoothly.
Flour: Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory flavors of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter rolled in flour. Adding flour directly to hot liquid can form lumps, because starch clumps before it disperses. Coating the flour in butter first helps it blend evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

Avocadofits about as well
Lemonthe original
Figfits about as well
Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, ham, onion, butter, flour. 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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An Excellent Hash From Cold Poultry