Name: Hashes and Toasts
Ingredients: lean meat; fat meat (optional); cold potatoes (optional); meat juice from a roast (optional); fresh butter (optional)

Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hashes and Toasts

Ingredients

Directions

Select only good quality meat, discarding any hard or gristly pieces.
Slice the meat thinly across the grain and chop finely.
Combine all ingredients, ensuring there are no large chunks.
Use a clean stew-pan and chopping bowl.
If using meat juice, ensure it is sweet and remove any fat or sediment.
If using cold potatoes, ensure they are also of good quality.

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.

Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).