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Directions for Making Hash

Hash is a dish of chopped cooked meat and boiled potatoes cooked together with butter or stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, onion juice or parsley.

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 ↓

Directions for Making Hash

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix chopped cooked meat and chopped boiled potatoes in a pan.

  2. If the mixture is dry, add butter and hot water or stock.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, and add onion juice or parsley if desired.

  4. Heat the mixture thoroughly before serving.

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Cooked meat
Provides the main protein and savoury flavour of the hash.
Boiled potatoes
Add bulk and a soft, starchy texture that binds the mixture together.
Butter or drippings
Adds fat for richness and helps the mixture brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Adding the hot water or stock. Adding liquid only if the mixture is dry keeps it moist without making it soggy. Hot liquid is absorbed more evenly and helps the potato and meat heat through together.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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