Name: Hashes and Minces
Ingredients: butter; flour; hash (cooked meat); cayenne pepper; mushroom ketchup; tarragon vinegar; toasted bread

Why it works: Pepper and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hashes and Minces

Ingredients

Directions

Melt butter in a hot ladle or iron spoon.
Mix in flour until well browned, but not burnt.
Stir this mixture into the liquid in a saucepan.
Let it boil gently for 2-3 minutes.
Add slices of meat, cayenne pepper, mushroom ketchup, and tarragon vinegar if desired.
Place the saucepan near the fire for nearly an hour without boiling.
Serve the hash in a dish or small tureen with toasted bread around the sides.

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.

Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the tarragon

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

Thymefits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well
Tarragonthe original
Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, meat, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.