Name: Nut Hash
Ingredients: cold cereal (rice, barley, hominy, grits, etc.); hazelnut meal; water; Brazil nuts (optional); almonds (optional); pecans (optional)

Why it works: Brazil nut and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Nut Hash

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Chop the cold cereal and mix it with an equal quantity of hazelnut meal.
Add a little water to the mixture.
Place the mixture in the oven and cook for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).
For variations, use Brazil nuts with rice or sago, almonds with tapioca or pearl barley, and pecans with hominy or grits.

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.

Brazil nut + almondtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together68 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Hazelnut + brazil nuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Hazelnut + almondtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together186 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Brazil nut + pecanstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together40 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Rice + barleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together568 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the brazil nut

The recipe marks brazil nut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, barley, hazelnut, almond, pecans):

Pistachiofits about as well
Brazil nutthe original
Cashew nutfits about as well
Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, barley, hazelnut, almond, pecans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.