Why it works: Potato and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓
Hashed Browned Potatoes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut cold cooked potatoes into small cubes.
Cook
In a frying pan, cook thin slices of salt pork until browned, then remove them.
Add the cubed potatoes to the pan and press them into a mound.
Brown one side, then turn and brown the other side using a wide-bladed knife.
Serve
Serve on a hot dish.
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.
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Potato + porktop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,668 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cold cooked potatoes
- Provide the starchy base that browns into crisp, golden hash brown pieces.
- Salt pork
- Renders fat into the pan, which helps the potatoes brown and adds savory flavor.
The step that matters
Brown one side, then turn and brown the other side. Pressing the potatoes into a mound and leaving them undisturbed lets a crust form on the first side. Turning too early or too often breaks that crust and leaves the potatoes soggy rather than crisp.
“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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