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Hashed Brown Potatoes

A dish of diced boiled potatoes sautéed with butter, onion, flour, stock, and seasonings, finished with a browned crust and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Hashed Brown Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Sprinkle the diced potatoes with pepper.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan.

  3. Add the onion to the pan and cook until the onion is yellow.

  4. Stir in the flour and cook until the mixture is slightly brown.

  5. Add the stock, cream, or water and season with salt.

  6. Add the potatoes and cook until the potatoes absorb most of the sauce, about 10 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Melt 1 teaspoon of butter in another pan and add the potatoes.

  2. Stir several times and cook until a brown crust forms underneath.

  3. Turn the potatoes over like an omelet.

  4. Serve garnished with parsley.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and, once fried, give a crisp brown crust with a soft interior.
Flour
Thickens the butter and onion mixture into a sauce that coats the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and browns in the pan to help form the crust.
Stock, cream, or water
Liquid that the flour thickens, which the potatoes then absorb to become moist.

The step that matters

Cook until a brown crust forms underneath before turning. Browning needs the potatoes left undisturbed in hot fat long enough to form a crust. Turning or stirring too early tears the crust and leaves the potatoes pale and soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, cream, pepper, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, cream, 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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