Name: A Common Hash of Cold Beef or Mutton
Ingredients: cold beef or mutton; coarse sea salt; 1½ pints beef stock; 1 large carrot, cut into thick slices; 4 cloves garlic; 2 teaspoons arrowroot; boiled potatoes

Why it works: Garlic and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,517 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

A Common Hash of Cold Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

Remove the meat from the bones and slice it small.
Trim off any brown parts and break the bones.

Make the sauce

In a pot, combine the meat, bones, carrot, garlic, and beef stock.
Simmer until the stock reduces to about ¾ of a pint.
Thicken the mixture with arrowroot, adding salt to taste.
Heat for a few minutes, then serve with sliced boiled potatoes.

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.

Garlic + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,517 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Clove + arrowroottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together121 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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 meat that forms the body of the hash.
Beef stock: Supplies the liquid that is reduced into a savory, concentrated sauce.
Arrowroot: Thickens the stock into a glossy sauce without making it cloudy.
Garlic: Adds aromatic flavor that deepens the savory taste of the sauce.
Carrot: Adds natural sweetness and body to the simmered stock.

The step that matters

Thicken with arrowroot. Arrowroot must be stirred into liquid that is only just simmering or warm, then cooked briefly. Boiling it hard for long can break down its thickening power and leave the sauce thin.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, clove, garlic, potato):

Onionfits better
Leekfits better
Chivefits better
Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, clove, garlic, potato. 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.

Potato Croquettes255 recipes

Roast Beef211 recipes

Beef Loaf175 recipes

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

A Common Hash of Cold Beef or Mutton