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A Common Hash of Cold Beef or Mutton

A hash made from sliced cold beef or mutton, simmered with bones, onion, herbs, carrot, spices, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

A Common Hash of Cold Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the meat from the bones and slice it small.

  2. Trim off the brown edges.

Make the stock

  1. Stew the trimmings with the broken bones, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, peppercorns, cloves, salt, and water.

  2. Reduce the mixture to about ¾ pint.

  3. Strain the liquid and remove the fat.

Finish the hash

  1. Thicken the strained liquid with rice flour or arrow-root.

  2. Add salt and pepper if needed, and boil for a few minutes.

  3. Add the meat and heat it well without boiling.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef or mutton
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the hash.
Rice flour or arrow-root
Thickens the strained stock into a light sauce that coats the meat.
Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during stewing, enriching the stock.

The step that matters

Add the meat and heat it well without boiling. Once the meat goes into the thickened liquid, boiling can toughen the protein and make it dry and stringy. Gentle heating warms it through while keeping it tender.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, rice):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, rice. 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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