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A Common Hash

A hash made from wild fowl skin and trimmings simmered in broth, thickened with roux, and flavored with port wine, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

A Common Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the skin and trimmings of the wild fowl in good broth or gravy with shallots until the flavor is imparted.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Heat and thicken the strained mixture slightly with brown roux or browned flour.

  4. Add port wine, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper to taste.

Warm the birds

  1. Warm the birds slowly in the sauce until thoroughly hot, but do not allow them to boil.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Skin and trimmings of wild fowl
Provide the main meaty flavor that is drawn into the broth.
Brown roux or browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty depth of color.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and a rich, fruity background to the sauce.
Juice of ½ small lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the birds without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in cooked meat, making it dry and stringy, so the birds should be heated gently until just hot.

“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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