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Hash Toast

Hash Toast is a dish of hashed meat served over toasted bread with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hash Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hash

  1. Slice the meat very thin and chop it fine.

  2. Mix the browned flour into the meat.

Cook

  1. Dilute the cold gravy with warm water and pour it into a stew-pan.

  2. Add the meat and cook slowly for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. After 10 minutes, stir in the cream and heat almost to boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour the hash over the toasted bread.

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

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

  2. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

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

  4. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 supplies the main flavour.
Cold gravy or meat juice
Provides liquid and savoury flavour that moistens the meat as it cooks.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture when heated almost to boiling.
Browned flour
Thickens the liquid slightly so the hash clings to the toast.

The step that matters

Heating the cream. Stir in the cream after the slow cooking and heat only until almost boiling. Boiling a dairy cream can cause it to separate and turn grainy, which spoils the smooth texture.

“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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