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Hashes and Minces

A savory dish of minced meat, onion, carrot, celery, and parsley simmered in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hashes and Minces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the meat, removing any browned parts.

  2. Blanch the onion halves for 5 minutes, then mince finely.

Make the hash

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter or dripping over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced onion and fry until light golden brown.

  3. Gradually stir in the hot water and glaze or essence.

  4. Add the meat scraps, peppercorns, sugar, salt, anchovy, celery, carrot, and parsley.

  5. Allow to simmer gently, stirring occasionally, for as long as possible.

  6. Increase heat slightly until the surface steams, then serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Frying until light golden brown builds savoury flavour and sweetness as the onion browns.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the onion and gives the sauce a rich, rounded flavour.
Meat scraps
Supply the main meaty flavour, which deepens as the scraps simmer in the liquid.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the simmering liquid.
Anchovy
Adds a savoury, umami depth that enriches the broth without tasting distinctly fishy.

The step that matters

Gentle simmering. A gentle simmer extracts flavour from the meat and vegetables slowly while keeping the liquid clear. A hard boil would make it cloudy and reduce it unevenly, so keep the heat low and steady.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, sugar, anchovy, celery, carrot, parsley):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, sugar, anchovy, celery, carrot, parsley. 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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