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Hash

Hash is a savory dish of cooked meat, onions, carrot, herbs, and gravy thickened with flour and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Chop the bones of the meat into small pieces and place them in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover.

  2. Add the herbs, one onion, and the carrot (washed, scraped, and sliced).

  3. Simmer gently for 1½ hours.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Add the seasoning.

Make the gravy

  1. Slice the other onion and fry it brown in the dripping.

  2. Add the fried onion to the gravy.

  3. Thicken with the flour.

  4. Stir well until boiling.

  5. Add the ketchup.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the meat into nice pieces.

  2. Heat the meat in the gravy without boiling.

  3. Serve with mashed potatoes or small pieces of toast around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat and bones
Bones release flavour and gelatin into the water, giving the gravy body and savoury depth.
Onions
Frying one until brown adds sweetness and deep savoury colour to the gravy.
Dripping
Fat that carries the onion's flavour and browns it richly.
Flour
Starch that thickens the gravy as it comes to the boil.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness that rounds out the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Heat the meat in the gravy without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat and can make it stringy, so it should be warmed gently in the simmering-hot gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, flour, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, flour, ketchup, pepper. 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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