Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Hash

A baked dish of chopped meat, vegetables, onion, mashed potato, and liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the hash

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat and cold vegetables.

  2. Add the chopped onion and mashed potato.

  3. Pour in enough stock, water, or gravy to soften the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking dish and bake until crisp.

  2. Serve on a hot platter.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chopped meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the hash.
Cold vegetables
Add bulk and flavour, and their moisture helps bind the mixture.
Mashed potato
Its starch helps hold the mixture together and adds body.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury flavour as it cooks.

The step that matters

Pour in enough stock, water, or gravy to soften the mixture. Too little liquid leaves the hash dry and crumbly, while too much keeps it soggy and stops it from crisping in the oven. The liquid should moisten the ingredients evenly so they can brown at the surface.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, onion, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, onion, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipes