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Hashed Brown Potatoes

A dish of boiled potatoes mixed with cream, butter, pepper, salt, onion juice, and parsley, then broiled until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hashed Brown Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until half-cooked.

  2. Cut the potatoes into dice-sized pieces.

Stew the hash

  1. Stew the potatoes with cream, butter, pepper, salt, onion juice, and parsley.

Brown and serve

  1. Transfer to a dish and brown the top under a broiler.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 and soften into a tender, starchy base.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the potatoes soft and creamy as they stew.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the top brown richly under the broiler.

The step that matters

Browning the top under the broiler. Broiling heat browns the surface quickly, and the sugars and milk solids in the cream and butter can scorch within moments. Watch closely and pull the dish as soon as the top is golden.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cream, butter, pepper, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cream, butter, pepper, 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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