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A dish of cold meat slices simmered in gravy and served with fried bread triangles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the best slices of cold meat from the joint.

  2. Remove all scraps of meat from the bone.

  3. Mix flour, salt, and pepper on a plate.

  4. Coat each slice of meat with the mixture.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy by simmering bones, carrot, turnip, onion, herbs, pepper, and salt in water for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Return the strained gravy to the saucepan and add the meat slices.

  4. Heat the gravy gently until it is just boiling.

  5. Add ketchup or sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a dish.

  2. Pour gravy over the meat.

  3. Decorate with fried bread triangles.

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. Turnip + oniontop 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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat slices
Provides the main protein; the gravy and coating are built around it.
Flour
Coats the meat slices so they take up the gravy and help thicken the sauce.
Ketchup or harvey's sauce
Adds sweetness, acidity and savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the gravy gently until it is just boiling. Flour-thickened liquids can lump or scorch if heated too fast, and boiling hard can toughen the meat. Gentle heat keeps the gravy smooth and the slices tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

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