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Hashed Brown Potatoes with Gravy

Sliced boiled potatoes sautéed with onions, butter, flour, and served with a tomato ketchup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashed Brown Potatoes with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour and brown carefully.

  3. Add 1 cup of boiling water, reserving 3 tablespoons.

  4. Stir in salt, pepper, half of the sliced onion, and half of the bay leaf.

  5. Melt another tablespoon of butter with the reserved boiling water.

  6. Moisten the potatoes with this mixture.

Brown the potatoes

  1. Rub a frying pan with the remaining half of the onion.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of butter and heat until very hot.

  3. Pour in the prepared potatoes and brown them.

  4. Turn the potatoes out like an omelette onto a hot platter.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy, add tomato ketchup, and serve it in a sauceboat with the potatoes or pour it around them on the platter.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the main body of the dish and brown into a crisp crust on the outside.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the potatoes brown in the hot pan.
Flour
Browned in butter to thicken the gravy as it cooks with the water.
Onion
Flavours the gravy and lightly seasons the pan before the potatoes go in.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the potatoes in a very hot pan. The pan must be very hot before the potatoes go in, so the surface browns and crisps instead of steaming. Crowding or a cool pan leaves the potatoes soft and pale.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, flour, butter, pepper, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, flour, butter, pepper, ketchup. 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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