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Savoury Hash

Savory hash made with mutton, butter, flour, onion, pickles, herbs, pepper, sea salt, mushroom ketchup, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Savoury Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Peel and slice the onion, then add it to the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the flour and fry for 1-2 minutes until browned.

  4. Open the tin of mutton, remove the fat, and set it aside.

  5. Take 1½ pounds of mutton from the tin.

Make the gravy

  1. If using all the meat, rinse the tin with ½ pint of warm water to make gravy.

  2. Pour the gravy into the saucepan with the flour and butter, stirring until it boils and thickens.

  3. Keep the saucepan warm off the heat.

  4. Finely chop the mixed pickles and stir them into the mixture.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, and its fat is removed before cooking.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and flour, adding richness and flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma when softened in butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the gravy into the flour and butter. Adding warm liquid to a hot flour and butter mixture while stirring keeps it smooth. Stopping stirring can leave lumps, and the flour needs to come to a boil to fully thicken the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, flour, vinegar, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, vinegar, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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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