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The Epicure's Hash

A savory mutton hash simmered with onions, broth, sauces, and spices, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The Epicure's Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onions until brown.

  2. Add the broth, Harvey sauce, tarragon vinegar, curry paste, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring often.

  4. Mix the flour with a little cold water until smooth, then add to the sauce to thicken.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the sauce has boiled thoroughly, add the sliced mutton and heat through without boiling.

  2. Serve hot with pieces of toast around the dish.

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. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Onion + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that is warmed through in the finished sauce.
Onions
Browning in butter builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it is heated, giving it body.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the other flavors.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the mutton through without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes them dry and stringy, so the mutton should only be warmed in the finished sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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