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An Excellent Hash From Cold Potjltry

A hash made from cold poultry, ham, onion, and seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Potjltry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the meat into pieces.

  2. Put the trimmings and bones in a saucepan with pepper, salt, ham, and onion.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Finish the hash

  1. Thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  2. Add the meat and heat through.

  3. Before serving, squeeze in a little 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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and smooths its texture as it thickens.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce when cooked with butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury depth to the simmered stock.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid so its starch swells and thickens the sauce smoothly. Adding it raw or in lumps can leave a pasty, uneven texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. 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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