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Hash on Toast

A savory dish of diced meat, potatoes, carrots, and brown sauce served on toast.

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

Hash on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Add the flour and whisk in stock or water gradually until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the diced meat and vegetables to the sauce and heat thoroughly.

  2. Serve the mixture on toast, garnishing with toast points and chopped parsley.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  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

Cooked meat
Provides the savoury main body and flavour of the hash.
Cooked potatoes
Adds bulk and soft texture that absorbs the sauce.
Cooked carrots
Adds mild sweetness and colour to the mixture.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid into a smooth, coating sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and cooks the flour into the sauce base.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that forms the sauce and adds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Whisk the stock into the flour gradually. Adding the liquid slowly while whisking lets the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth sauce as the starch thickens with heat.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, butter, flour, pepper, sauce, parsley. 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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