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Canned Roast Beef, Hash

A hash made from canned roast beef, boiled potatoes, onion, seasoned with pepper and salt, fried until crispy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Canned Roast Beef, Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the canned roast beef and boiled potatoes thoroughly.

  2. Chop the onion and mix all ingredients together.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Grease a frying pan with pork or bacon fat and heat it over medium-high heat.

  2. Brown the mixture in the pan until heated through and slightly crispy.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  3. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned roast beef
Provides the main protein and meaty flavour of the hash.
Boiled potatoes
Add starch and body, and crisp slightly when browned in the pan.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it cooks.
Pork or bacon fat
Conducts heat and promotes browning on the pan surface.

The step that matters

Browning the mixture in the pan. The mixture needs enough heat and contact with the pan to brown rather than steam. Browning, driven by the Maillard reaction, builds flavour and gives the slightly crisp texture the dish depends on.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, pepper, pork):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, pepper, pork. 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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