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Vegetable Hash

A sautéed mixture of cabbage, potatoes, turnips, and beets cooked in corned‑beef fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, potatoes, turnips, and beets separately and coarsely.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables together in a bowl and season the mixture with salt and pepper.

Cook

  1. In a frying pan, heat 2 tablespoons of corned-beef fat over medium heat until melted.

  2. Add the vegetable mixture to the pan and cook until heated through, about 10-15 minutes.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 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

Cabbage
Provides bulk and a mild, sweet flavor as it softens in the hot fat.
Potatoes
Starch browns in the hot fat and helps bind the hash into a cohesive mass.
Turnips
Add a slightly peppery bite and firm texture that holds up to frying.
Beets
Add earthy sweetness and a deep color to the hash.
Corned-beef fat
Carries heat evenly through the vegetables and adds rich, savory flavor.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, turnip, pepper, beef):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, turnip, pepper, beef. 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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