Skip to main content
Main

Mixed Hash

Mixed Hash is a savory dish of diced potatoes, browned flour, stock, and meat served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mixed Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the browned flour and stock, stirring until it begins to cook.

Cook the hash

  1. Add the diced potatoes and cook until tender.

  2. Stir in the chopped meat and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve the hash on toast.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turkey + potatotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

Flour and butter 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

Hashed turkey or chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the hash.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce and adds a toasty, nutty flavour.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that cooks the flour into a sauce and moistens the hash.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, becoming tender and soaking up the savoury sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the pan-cooked ingredients brown lightly.

The step that matters

Adding the browned flour and stock. Stirring constantly while the liquid is added to the flour prevents lumps, because flour clumps when it meets liquid before it is evenly dispersed. Cooking it until it begins to cook lets the starch thicken the sauce.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes