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A Common Hash of Cold Beef or Mutton

A hash made from sliced cold beef or mutton, simmered with bones, vegetables, herbs, and spices, then thickened and served.

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, trimming off the brown edges.

Make the stock

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

  2. Reduce the mixture to about ¾ pint, then strain and remove the fat.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the strained liquid with rice flour or arrowroot, adding salt and pepper if needed.

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

  3. Optionally, slice boiled potatoes into the hash before serving.

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 meat and body of the hash.
Rice flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a gravy that coats the meat.
Arrowroot
Thickens the strained liquid into a clear gravy that coats the meat.
Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the stock as they stew.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Thicken and boil the liquid before adding the meat. Starch thickens only when it is boiled, so the gravy must come to a boil for a few minutes to lose its raw, floury taste and reach full thickness. Adding the meat afterward keeps it from toughening through prolonged boiling.

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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