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Chicken Hash on Toast

A simple chicken hash served hot over moist toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Hash on Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hash

  1. Combine water, butter, salt, and pepper in a stew-pan.

  2. Add the chicken or veal and bring to a boil.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour rubbed smooth in a little milk.

Serve

  1. Serve hot over moist toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the sauce.
Chicken or veal
Provides the cooked meat that forms the body of the hash.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour rubbed smooth in milk. Flour lumps form if dry flour is dropped straight into hot liquid, because starch granules clump before they can disperse. Rubbing the flour smooth in cold milk first lets the granules separate, so the sauce thickens evenly as it heats.

“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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