Name: Corned Beef Hash
Ingredients: cold corned beef; cold chopped potatoes; water from cooking beef; butter or drippings

Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Corned Beef Hash

Ingredients

cold corned beef
cold chopped potatoes
water from cooking beef
butter or drippings

Directions

Remove all gristle and bone from the cold corned beef and chop it finely.
Add twice the amount of cold chopped potatoes to the beef.
Moisten the mixture with some of the water the beef was cooked in.
Grease a skillet with the fat that rises when the beef is cold and warm the mixture through.
Optionally, moisten with milk if preferred.
Form the mixture into flat cakes and brown both sides on a greased flat griddle.

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.

Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,847 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).