Skip to main content
Main

Corn-beef Hash

A hash of chopped corned beef, boiled potatoes, butter, and seasonings, cooked until a crust forms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Corn-beef Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the corned beef fine, discarding any hard gristle.

  2. Boil the potatoes with their skins on, then chop them not too fine once cooled.

Cook the hash

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat and add a few spoonfuls of boiling water.

  2. When bubbling, add the chopped meat and potatoes, along with salt and pepper.

  3. Heat the mixture, stirring occasionally without mashing the potatoes.

  4. Let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes until a crust forms at the bottom.

Serve

  1. Shape the mixture into a neat loaf.

  2. Loosen it from the pan with a cake turner.

  3. Quickly invert a warm platter over the pan and turn them together to serve.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 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

Corned beef
Provides the main savory meat flavor and the bulk of the hash.
Potatoes
Add body and starch that hold the hash together and help it crisp.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bottom brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture sit to form a crust. Resting the hash undisturbed over medium heat lets the bottom brown and set into a crust. Stirring or mashing it during this time breaks the crust and makes the potatoes pasty, so the loaf will not hold its shape.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, meat, butter, egg, pepper, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

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

Meatless Tomato SoupMeatless Tomato Soup23 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipes