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A Common Hash of Cold Beef or Mutton

A hash made from sliced cold beef or mutton simmered with onion, herbs, carrot, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

A Common Hash of Cold Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the meat from the bones and slice it small.

  2. Trim off the brown edges of the meat.

Make the gravy

  1. Stew the trimmings with the broken bones, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, peppercorns, cloves, salt, and water.

  2. Reduce the mixture to about ¾ cup.

  3. Strain and remove the fat.

  4. Thicken the strained liquid with rice flour or arrow-root, adding salt and pepper if needed.

Finish

  1. Boil the mixture for a few minutes, then add the meat and heat it thoroughly.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef or mutton
Provides the main meaty body and chewy texture of the hash.
Bones and trimmings
Release gelatin and meat flavour into the stock as they simmer.
Rice flour or arrow-root
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, lightly glossy gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the strained liquid. Starch must be stirred into liquid and then boiled briefly so it swells and sets the gravy. Adding it to a cold or unstrained liquid can leave lumps or a thin, cloudy sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, rice):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, rice. 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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