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A Meat Hash

A dish of tomatoes, onion, sugar, butter, salt, pepper, water, flour-dusted meat simmered for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Meat Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to remove the skins, then slice them.

  2. Chop the onion and add it to a stew pan with the tomatoes.

  3. Add sugar, butter, salt, pepper, and cold water to the pan.

  4. Shave the meat as thin as possible and dust it with flour.

Cook

  1. Cook the mixture slowly for one hour.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and moisture of the hash as they break down during cooking.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the base as it softens.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the mixture a smoother mouthfeel.
Meat
Forms the savory protein element of the hash, with flour helping it thicken the mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture slowly for one hour. Gentle, low heat lets the tomatoes and onion break down and the flour-dusted meat thicken the liquid without scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, sugar, butter, pepper, flour, meat):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sugar, butter, pepper, flour, meat. 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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