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Hashed Meat

A stew of sliced meat simmered with stock, onion, carrot, flour, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashed Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the bones in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove the bones and discard the fat from the stock.

Make the stew

  1. In a skillet, fry the sliced onion in the dripping until golden brown. Stir in the flour.

  2. Add the stock, chopped carrot, salt, and pepper. Boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the sliced meat and let it simmer gently for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with toasted bread snippets.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a richer, looser gravy as the onion cooks in the fat.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth when fried until golden brown.
Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water, forming the body of the stock.
Meat
Provides the main protein and savoury flavour, becoming tender during gentle simmering.
Dripping
Carries heat for frying the onion and adds rich, savoury fat flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat gently. Boiling vigorously toughens muscle proteins and can make the meat dry and stringy. A gentle simmer lets collagen soften slowly, keeping the meat tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, carrot, nutmeg, flour, meat):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, carrot, nutmeg, flour, meat. 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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