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Hash, Horman

A savory stew of sliced beef or mutton with onions, butter, flour, stock, gravy, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Hash, Horman

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add flour and brown well.

  3. Stir in stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Add gravy, season with salt, pepper, lemon pickle, and mushroom ketchup.

Finish the hash

  1. Layer the meat in the sauce, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers slowly in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the heat that browns the onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Browned with the butter and onions, it thickens the stock into a sauce.
Button onions
Browned deeply in butter, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries flavour through the dish.

The step that matters

Browning the onions and flour. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, but scorched onions or flour turn bitter. Cook until rich brown, not black, before adding liquid.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, butter, flour, 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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