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Lamb Hash

A savory dish of chopped lamb simmered with butter, flour, milk, and spices, served on toasted bread topped with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lamb Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lamb mixture

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan without frying.

  2. Stir in flour and cook briefly.

  3. Add milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Mix in salt, cayenne, and onion juice.

  5. Stir in the chopped lamb and nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Spread the mixture on rounds of toasted bread.

  2. Top each round with a poached egg and serve.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Cooked briefly in the butter, it thickens the milk into a smooth, binding sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens, giving the hash a creamy, moist texture.
Cold cooked lamb
Provides the main meat flavour and body of the hash.
Poached eggs
Add richness and a runny yolk that moistens the hash when cut.

The step that matters

Bring the milk and flour to a boil. Flour thickens milk only when the mixture is heated enough for its starch to swell. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching on the pan bottom, giving a smooth sauce to bind the lamb.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, flour, milk, pepper, nutmeg, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, flour, milk, pepper, nutmeg, bread. 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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