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Potato and Beef Hash

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato and Beef Hash

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine minced cold beef and fat in a bowl.

  2. Add an equal amount or twice as much chopped cold boiled potatoes.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Add enough gravy or hot water to moisten the mixture.

  5. Transfer to a stewpan over gentle heat.

  6. Dredge in a small amount of wheat flour and stir with a spoon.

  7. Cover the stewpan and let it simmer for 30 minutes, ensuring it does not burn.

  8. Serve with or without a slice of toast underneath.

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 + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Beef + wheattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Swap the potato

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

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, wheat, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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