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Vegetable Hash

A hash of cooked vegetables sautéed with butter or oil, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each vegetable into small pieces, ensuring they retain their shape.

  2. Mix all the cut vegetables together in a bowl.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and pepper, and add any optional herbs if desired.

  4. Moisten the hash with up to ½ cup of broth, milk, or water.

Cook

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter or oil in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Spread the seasoned hash in the pan and dot with another tablespoon of butter or 2 tablespoons of oil.

  3. Cover the pan and cook on low heat for 30 minutes, ensuring it does not burn.

  4. Once cooked, fold the hash and turn it onto a hot platter.

  5. Serve immediately on hot plates.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starchy bulk that holds the hash together and browns in the pan.
Butter or oil
Conducts heat across the pan and adds richness and browning to the surface.
Broth, milk, or water
Adds moisture so the hash steams through and does not dry out during cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking covered on low heat. Low, covered heat steams the vegetables through gently, while the fat lets the bottom brown; too much heat can scorch the bottom before the centre is hot.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, turnip, leek, cabbage, pepper, milk):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, turnip, leek, cabbage, pepper, milk. 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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