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Hashed Browned Potatoes

A skillet dish of browned potatoes cooked in drippings, seasoned with salt and butter, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Browned Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the drippings in a skillet.

  2. Add the chopped cold boiled potatoes and pat down slightly.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and dots of butter.

  4. Add chopped onion if desired.

Cook

  1. Cook slowly without stirring for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Loosen around the edges and turn or fold over like an omelet.

Serve

  1. Remove to a hot platter and sprinkle with minced parsley.

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 + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the hash, becoming crisp outside and fluffy inside when pan-fried.
Drippings
Provide fat that conducts heat and gives the potatoes a rich, browned crust.
Butter
Adds richness and a toasty, nutty flavor as it browns in the pan.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and caramelizes in the fat.

The step that matters

Cook slowly without stirring. Leaving the potatoes undisturbed lets a browned crust form on the bottom. Stirring breaks that crust and keeps the hash soft and pale instead of crisp.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, parsley. 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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