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To Make a Hash

A hash of cold meat, onions, carrot, turnip, and butter simmered in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Make a Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the cold meat from the bone into nice slices and set aside.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter over low heat and add the sliced onion, carrot, and turnip.

  3. Brown the vegetables gently, then add the bones, water, pepper, and salt.

  4. Boil until the liquid reduces by one-third, then strain the broth.

Make the gravy

  1. Make a brown roux and gradually add the hot gravy, boiling to remove the raw flour taste.

  2. If the gravy is not rich enough, stir in the brown sugar and adjust the color with browning sauce if needed.

Heat and serve

  1. Place the slices of cold meat in the stewpan by the side of the fire to heat thoroughly without boiling.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 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

Cold meat
Forms the main body of the dish, heated through gently in the finished gravy.
Onion
Browned gently with the other vegetables to add savory sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Carrot
Browned gently with the onion to add natural sweetness and depth to the broth.
Turnip
Browned with the other vegetables to add body and mild earthy flavor to the broth.
Butter
Fat that softens and browns the vegetables and forms the base of the roux.

The step that matters

Boiling the gravy after adding the hot broth to the roux. Flour thickens only when its starch cooks fully; boiling the gravy removes the raw flour taste and lets it thicken smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, turnip, butter, pepper, sugar, sauce):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, butter, pepper, sugar, sauce. 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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