Name: Hash Baked
Ingredients: 1 onion, finely chopped; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon fat; 1 tomato; cooked meat, chopped fine; coarse sea salt; pepper; Worcestershire sauce; mashed potatoes

Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Hash Baked

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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

In a dripping pan, brown the chopped onion in butter and fat.
Add the tomato and chopped meat, seasoning with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

Assemble and bake

Line a baking dish with mashed potatoes and fill it with the meat mixture.
Bake until browned nicely.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 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

Onion: Softens and sweetens as it browns in butter and fat, building the base flavour.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the onion brown in the pan.
Cooked meat: Forms the main body of the filling and adds savoury flavour.
Mashed potatoes: Forms the lining layer that gives the dish its body and soft texture.
Tomato: Adds moisture and acidity to the meat filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, meat, pepper, sauce, potato):

Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits about as well
Onionthe original
Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, meat, pepper, sauce, potato. 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.