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Hashes and Toasts

A dish of hashed meat, stale bread crumbs, and potatoes simmered with gravy and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashes and Toasts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the strained liquor or gravy with enough boiling water in a pot to moisten the meat.

  2. Slice the onion.

  3. Cook the chopped potato with a little boiling water for 5 to 7 minutes until half cooked.

  4. Grate the stale bread into fine crumbs.

Cook the hash

  1. Cover the pot. Cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the hashed meat. Cover tightly. Heat again. Stir once or twice.

  3. Stir the potatoes into the meat mixture. Heat until steaming hot.

  4. Add the bread crumbs. Cover. Heat thoroughly. Stir several times for 10 to 15 minutes until well blended.

Serve

  1. Serve the hash in a tureen.

  2. Accompany with baked or mashed potatoes.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Hashed meat
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its main savoury flavour.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the moist liquid and help bind the hash into a cohesive mass.
Raw chopped potato
Adds body and starch that thickens the mixture as it cooks.
Strained meat liquor or gravy
Moistens the meat and carries savoury flavour through the hash.

The step that matters

Cooking the potato to half cooked before combining. Potato pieces added raw would stay firm while the meat overcooks. Partly cooking them first lets everything reach tenderness together during the final heating.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, potato):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, potato. 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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