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Hashed, in Crustades

A crustade filled with hashed woodcock, Champagne shallot sauce, and a poached egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hashed, in Crustades

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the woodcock

  1. Roast the woodcocks.

  2. Finely hash the meat.

  3. Remove the gizzards.

  4. Pound the intestines.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine Champagne and shallots.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil twice.

  3. Add espagnole sauce and let it boil.

  4. Mix in the pounded intestines without boiling.

  5. Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the bread into rounds.

  2. Fry the bread rounds in butter or oil.

  3. Hollow the fried bread rounds.

  4. Mix the hash with the sauce.

  5. Fill the bread crustades with the mixture.

  6. Top each crustade with a poached egg.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Champagne + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 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

Woodcocks
Provide the main meat, which is finely hashed and bound into the filling.
Champagne
Adds acidity and aroma as it reduces with the shallots into the sauce base.
Espagnole sauce
Gives the sauce body and rich savoury depth that coats the hash.
Bread rounds
Form the crisp fried crustade shells that hold the filling.
Eggs
Poached on top, their soft yolk enriches the filling when broken.

The step that matters

Mix in the pounded intestines without boiling. Boiling after the offal is added can cause it to curdle and turn grainy, so it must be stirred in off the heat and kept below a boil to keep the puree smooth.

“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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