Name: Potato and Beef Hash
Ingredients: cold beef, minced; fat from the beef; cold boiled potatoes, chopped; pepper; coarse sea salt; gravy or hot water; wheat flour; butter (optional)

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

Combine minced cold beef and fat in a bowl.
Add chopped cold boiled potatoes in equal or double quantity to the beef.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Stir in enough gravy or hot water to moisten the mixture.
Transfer to a stewpan over low heat.
Sprinkle in a small amount of wheat flour and stir with a spoon.
Cover the stewpan and let it simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
Serve with or without a slice of toast.

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.

Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together235 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

Potatothe original
Chivefits about as well
Leekfits about as well
Spinachfits about as well

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