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Savoury Hash

A hearty dish of meat, vegetables, and gravy served with mashed potatoes and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Savoury Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Remove all the meat from the joint and place bones and trimmings in a saucepan with an onion, carrot, peppercorns, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Cover with cold water and boil for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture into a basin and remove all the fat.

  4. In a pan, fry an onion in a little butter, then add sliced carrot, turnip, celery, and tomato or mushrooms.

  5. Stir in the cornflour.

  6. Pour in the strained gravy and boil for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Cut the meat into neat pieces and place in a clean saucepan.

  2. Strain the gravy over the meat.

  3. Heat thoroughly without boiling.

  4. Serve the meat on a hot dish.

  5. Pour over the gravy.

  6. Garnish with boiled carrots and turnips cut into fancy shapes or with mashed potatoes and toasted bread.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Remains of a joint of meat
Provides the main protein and flavour for the dish.
Cornflour
Thickens the strained gravy as it simmers, giving it body.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion, adding richness and browning flavour.
Tomato or mushrooms
Adds moisture and savoury, earthy flavour to the gravy base.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly without boiling. Once the meat is back in the gravy, boiling can toughen the meat proteins and make the thickened gravy separate or turn stodgy. Gentle heat keeps the meat tender and the gravy smooth.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, carrot, butter, turnip, celery, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, carrot, butter, turnip, celery, potato. 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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