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A Common Hash of Cold Beef Ob Mutton

A hash made from cold beef or mutton, cooked with parsley, carrot, peppercorns, cloves, and rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Common Hash of Cold Beef Ob Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the meat from the bones and slice it small, trimming off the brown edges.

  2. Stew the trimmings with the bones, parsley, carrot, peppercorns, cloves, salt, and water until reduced to just over 1 pint.

  3. Strain the mixture and remove the fat.

Finish the hash

  1. Thicken the broth with rice flour, adding salt and pepper if needed.

  2. Boil the mixture, then add the sliced meat and heat it thoroughly.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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.
Rice flour
Thickens the broth so it clings to the sliced meat.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the broth as it stews.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth with rice flour. Rice flour must be fully whisked into the hot broth and then brought to a boil so it hydrates and thickens evenly. Adding it to cold liquid or skipping the boil can leave lumps or a thin, starchy-tasting sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, carrot, rice, flour, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, carrot, rice, flour, pepper. 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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