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Hashed Poek

A hash of thinly sliced cooked pork simmered in a spiced vinegar and broth sauce and served with gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hashed Poek

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine chopped onions, vinegar, cloves, mace, and bay leaf.

  2. Reduce to half.

  3. Remove the spices and bay leaf.

  4. Add broth or water.

Cook the pork

  1. Season the sliced pork with pepper and salt.

  2. Sprinkle the pork with flour and mix well.

  3. Add the pork mixture to the stewpan.

  4. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with gherkin slices.

  2. Add mustard or piccalilli if desired.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour of the reduced onion and spice sauce.
Cooked pork
Forms the main body of the dish, carrying the seasoning and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid in the stewpan as the pork simmers.
Broth or water
Adds liquid to the reduced vinegar mixture so the pork can simmer gently in it.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the pork with flour and mix well. Flour clumps easily if left in pockets, and lumps stay raw-tasting; mixing it evenly over the slices lets it dissolve and thicken the liquid smoothly during simmering.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar, clove, mace, pork, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, clove, mace, pork, pepper, 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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