Name: Beef Hash with Spaghetti
Ingredients: 1 lb spaghetti; ½ lb cheese; ⅓ cup milk; 1 tablespoon butter; beef hash

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Beef Hash with Spaghetti

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and layer

Cook the spaghetti according to package instructions, then wash and drain it.
In a baking pan, layer the spaghetti, cheese, and butter, with a thick layer of beef hash in between.
Pour the milk over the layers.

Bake

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Cheese + beeftop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,193 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

What each ingredient does

Spaghetti: Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a starchy, sturdy base once baked.
Cheese: Melts and binds the layers together while adding richness and browning on top.
Milk: Adds moisture that soaks into the layers and keeps the dish from drying out as it bakes.
Beef hash: Supplies the savory meaty layer that flavours the whole dish.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown in the oven.

“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.