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Hashed Fowl

A savory hash of cold roasted fowl, ham, and aromatics simmered in stock, thickened with butter and flour, finished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hashed Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, combine the fowl trimmings, shallots, lemon peel, mace, ham, and stock.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes, then strain the mixture.

  3. In a clean saucepan, melt a bit of butter. Once melted, stir in enough flour to absorb the butter, mixing continuously.

  4. Add the strained gravy and bring to a boil for 1 minute.

Finish the hash

  1. Add the fowl, then season with pepper, salt, and a dust of sugar.

  2. Before serving, squeeze in a little lemon juice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cold roasted fowl
Provides the main body of the hash as its meat.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock that flavours the gravy.
Butter
Fat that is cooked with flour to form a roux, thickening the gravy.
Flour
Absorbs the melted butter to form a roux that thickens the gravy.
Stock
Liquid base of the gravy, carrying the flavour of the aromatics.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. The flour must be stirred continuously as it absorbs the melted butter, so it cooks evenly without lumps or scorching. Properly mixed, the roux thickens the gravy smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, lemon, ham, butter, flour, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, lemon, ham, butter, flour, pepper, sugar. 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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