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Pork, Hashed

A pork hash made with sliced roast or boiled pork, butter, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, mustard, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pork, Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the pork into small slices and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and a little cayenne pepper.

Cook the hash

  1. In a stewpan, heat the butter or fat, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, lemon juice, and mustard until hot.

  2. Add the slices of meat to the hot mixture and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, without allowing the sauce to boil.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the hash.
Butter or fat
Carries flavour and adds richness and a glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and tang that flavours the meat.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the savoury sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil. Boiling a sauce containing butter, ketchup and mustard can cause the fat to separate and the sauce to turn thick or grainy. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth while the pork warms and absorbs its flavour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, sauce, ketchup, mustard, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, sauce, ketchup, mustard, 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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