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Hash on Toast

A savory dish of diced meat, potatoes, carrots, and butter sauce served over 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 hash

  1. Make a brown sauce by melting the butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in stock or water until thickened.

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

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on toast, garnished with toast points and 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
Forms the main body of the hash and supplies savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth brown sauce that holds the hash together.
Butter or dripping
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Cooked potatoes
Adds body and soft texture that soaks up the sauce.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the brown sauce. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and stock added gradually while whisking, or lumps form and the sauce thickens unevenly.

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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