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Boston Brown Hash

Boston Brown Hash is a baked dish of cold cooked beef, potatoes, butter, gravy, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Boston Brown Hash

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Chop the cold cooked beef and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Mix the beef with an equal quantity of cold boiled potatoes, chopped fine.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of butter and ½ cup of gravy to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease pie plates with butter and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Brush the top with butter before baking.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes.

  4. Transfer to a meat dish and garnish with parsley.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

Cold cooked beef
Forms the savory, meaty base that gives the hash its main body and flavor.
Cold boiled potatoes
Adds bulk and starch that helps bind the hash and gives it a soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown during baking.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor so the mixture bakes tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Brush the top with butter before baking. Butter adds fat that promotes browning on the surface in the oven, and without it the top may stay pale and dry.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Rosemaryfits less well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, potato, butter. 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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