Skip to main content
Main

A Common Hash of Cold Beef Ob Mutton

A hash made from cold beef or mutton, bones, onions, herbs, carrots, spices, and thickened with rice flour or arrow-root.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

A Common Hash of Cold Beef Ob Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove the meat from the bones and slice it small, trimming off the brown edges.

  2. Stew the trimmings with the broken bones, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, peppercorns, cloves, salt, and water.

  3. Reduce the mixture to about ¾ pint, then strain and remove the fat.

Finish the hash

  1. Thicken the strained liquid with rice flour or arrow-root, adding salt and pepper if needed.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes, then add the meat and heat it thoroughly.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef or mutton
Provides the main meat and savoury flavour of the hash.
Bones from the meat
Release gelatine and flavour into the stock as they simmer.
Rice flour or arrow-root
Thickens the strained liquid into a light, coating sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Thickening the stock. Starch must be fully heated in liquid to swell and thicken it. Adding it to stock that is not hot enough or boiled briefly leaves the sauce thin or lumpy, so boil the mixture for a few minutes after adding it.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, rice):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, onion, thyme, parsley, carrot, rice. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes