Skip to main content
Main

Hashing

Hashing is a shredded meat dish simmered in broth with onions, bread, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the bones from the meat and marrow, break them, and boil in liquor or water with two onions and a bit of toasted bread.

  2. Simmer for at least 30 minutes, then strain off the fat and scum.

Finish the hash

  1. Cut the meat into thin slices, about the width of a finger and half the length.

  2. Flour and season the meat with pepper and coarse sea salt, adding ketchup and cold gravy if desired.

  3. Stir the meat into the saucepan with the strained liquor, shaking to prevent sticking, and simmer until the gravy thickens.

  4. Serve with toasted bread snippets around the dish.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the meat slices and thickens the liquid into a gravy as it simmers.
Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the liquor during long simmering, giving body to the stock.
Toasted bread
Adds toasted, savoury flavour to the stock and a crisp garnish at serving.

The step that matters

Stirring the meat into the liquor while simmering. Floured meat can stick and scorch on the base of the pan. Shaking and stirring keep it moving, and the flour thickens the liquid evenly into a gravy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More meat hash recipes

Cold 23Australian 3 See all 26 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes