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To Hash Cold Meat

A hash made from cold meat scraps, onions, turnip, herbs, and flour, simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

To Hash Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold meat into thin slices and remove the meat from the bone.

  2. Chop the bone into pieces and place them in a saucepan.

  3. Peel and quarter one onion.

  4. Wash and scrape one carrot, then cut it into quarters.

  5. Peel and halve the turnip.

  6. Wash and dry the parsley.

  7. Tie the herbs together with string to form a bouquet garni.

Make the stock

  1. Add the herbs and vegetables to the saucepan with the bones and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Cover and reduce heat to simmer for about two hours, or 30 minutes if stock is pre-made.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Scraps of cold meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the hash.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown.
Flour
Thickens the liquid by swelling its starch as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the dish.
Herbs
Infuse the stock with aromatic flavour from parsley, thyme, marjoram and bay.

The step that matters

Simmer the stock gently. A gentle simmer draws flavour out of the bones and herbs slowly. A hard, rolling boil breaks up fats and particles, leaving the stock cloudy and sometimes bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, parsley, thyme, marjoram, flour, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, parsley, thyme, marjoram, flour, mushroom. 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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