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Hashed Meat

A savory dish of small pieces of meat simmered in sauces, wine, and capsicums, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,520 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashed Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim off all sinews, skin, and gristle from the meat.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the sauces, black pepper, cayenne, salt, port wine, and chopped capsicums with the gravy.

  2. If needed, add a little flour to thicken the sauce.

Heat and serve

  1. Warm the sauce with the meat and simmer gently until thoroughly warm; do not boil.

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. Tomato + capsicumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,520 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + capsicumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the main body of the dish, providing bulk and savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body and a smoother coating texture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Capsicums
Contribute fresh, slightly bitter flavour and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make them dry and stringy, while gentle heat keeps them tender and warms them evenly through the sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce, pepper, port wine, capsicum, beef, flour):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, pepper, port wine, capsicum, beef, 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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