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Hash of Roebuck

Hash of Roebuck is a dish of sliced roebuck meat simmered in brown sauce with vinegar and currant jelly, served with fried bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Hash of Roebuck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim away sinewy parts from the roebuck meat.

  2. Cut the meat into thin, narrow slices.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, pour in the brown sauce and let it reduce by one third.

  2. Gradually add the vinegar and currant jelly, stirring until combined.

  3. Add the slices of roebuck to the sauce and sprinkle with pepper.

  4. Warm the stewpan on a slow fire, keeping it covered to avoid boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the hash in a warmed dish, surrounded by fried bread crusts.

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. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Roebuck
Provides the main meat, which is slowly warmed so it stays tender rather than toughening.
Brown sauce
Forms the savoury base of the hash and carries the other flavours once reduced.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich, savoury sauce and balances the meat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body that offset the vinegar's sharpness.

The step that matters

Warm the stewpan on a slow fire, covered. Gentle, covered heat keeps the sauce below a boil so the thin meat slices warm through without toughening or drying out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, vinegar, pepper, bread):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, vinegar, pepper, bread. 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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