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Hash, Norman

A savory hash of button onions, butter, flour, stock, gravy, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Hash, Norman

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the button onions.

Make the hash

  1. Fry the onions in hot butter until rich brown.

  2. Add the flour and brown well.

  3. Stir in the stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the gravy, skim well, and season with salt, pepper, Lemon Pickle, and mushroom ketchup.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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

Button onions
Main vegetable that becomes sweet and richly browned in the hash.
Butter
Fat that carries the browning of the onions and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Stock
Liquid base that dissolves the browned flour and forms the sauce.
Gravy
Adds body and savory depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions and flour. Deep browning develops sweet, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale onions or flour leave the sauce flat, and scorched flour turns bitter, so heat should be controlled while stirring.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, lemon, mushroom, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, lemon, mushroom, 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.

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