Name: Hash with Gravy
Ingredients: cold meat, cut into pieces ½ inch thick; ½ pint water; 1 onion, chopped; 1 Irish potato, chopped fine; 1 tablespoon lard; 1 tablespoon flour; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; a little butter

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hash with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine the cold meat, water, onion, potato, lard, flour, pepper, and salt.
Cook over medium heat until the potato and onion are tender.
Serve with the gravy.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 cooking liquid into a gravy.
Potato: Adds body and soaks up some of the gravy, giving the hash a starchy texture.
Lard: Adds fat for flavour and helps the flour thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

Chivefits better
Shallotfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, flour, pepper, butter. 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.