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Hash-Balls

A dish of minced roast meat mixed with boiled potatoes, seasoned, formed into balls, coated with egg and breadcrumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Hash-Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix minced cold roast meat with cold boiled potatoes, chopped.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, and a little gravy.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Coat each ball with egg and then with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in butter, lard, or dripping until light brown.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Minced cold roast meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the balls.
Cold boiled potatoes
Adds bulk and starch that helps the balls hold their shape.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savouriness to the mixture.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs stick to each ball.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp outer layer that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. Frying in fat browns the crumb coating through the Maillard reaction and crisps it. Cooking too briefly leaves the coating pale and soft, while cooking too long can dry out the cold, already-cooked filling.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, egg, bread, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, egg, bread, butter. 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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