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Leg of Mutton or Beef, to Hash

A hash of leg of mutton or beef with onions, parsley, thyme, and mushroom powder, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Leg of Mutton or Beef, to Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat into small flat pieces, trimming skin and sinews while leaving some fat.

Make the hash

  1. Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and soup jelly.

  2. Add onions, parsley, thyme, and mushroom powder.

  3. Mix flour and butter into small balls, then add to the pot to thicken the sauce.

  4. Simmer the mixture, skimming off any scum.

  5. Add the meat and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with fried bread.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton or beef
Provides the main body of the hash and, with its retained fat, adds richness and flavour.
Flour
Combined with butter and stirred into the pot to thicken the sauce.
Butter
Works with flour to form thickening balls that add body and richness to the sauce.
Soup jelly
Adds savoury depth and body to the seasoning of the mixture.
Mushroom powder
Adds concentrated savoury, earthy flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter balls. Flour thickens sauce only when it is well dispersed and heated; adding it as lumps can leave floury pockets and uneven thickness, so it should be stirred in gently and simmered.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom, flour, butter. 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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