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Hashed Brown Potatoes

Hashed brown potatoes are sliced boiled potatoes cooked with butter, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hashed Brown Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold boiled potatoes finely.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and cream to the potatoes.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the potato mixture to the skillet and smooth it down.

  3. Cover and cook for a moment, then reduce heat and cook slowly for 10 minutes.

  4. Turn out onto a hot platter like an omelet.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and cohesive as they cook.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the potatoes hold together and turn tender.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the underside brown in the skillet.

The step that matters

Cook slowly after the initial covered cooking. Reducing the heat lets the bottom brown gently without scorching before the interior heats through. High heat for too long would burn the underside while the centre stays cool.

“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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