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Hash, Norman

A savory hash of button onions cooked in butter, flour, stock, and gravy, seasoned with salt, pepper, Lemon Pickle, and mushroom ketchup.

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.

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

  3. Add flour and brown well.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in stock from the bones of the joint.

  2. When it boils, add gravy and skim well.

  3. Season to taste 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
Browned in butter to develop a rich, sweet, deep flavour.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions, carrying heat and helping them brown.
Flour
Browned with the onions to thicken the sauce and add colour.
Stock
Liquid base that dissolves the browned flour into the sauce.
Gravy
Adds savoury body and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions and flour. Onions and flour must brown well, not just soften. Browning drives the Maillard reaction, which creates the deep colour and savoury flavour of the sauce. Pale frying leaves it tasting flat.

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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