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Fried Potato Hash

A dish of sliced boiled potatoes fried with drippings, seasoned with salt, pepper, and onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fried Potato Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold boiled potatoes.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and onion juice.

Fry

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of drippings in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Add the potatoes and pat them smooth.

  3. Cook slowly, turning the frying pan occasionally to brown evenly.

  4. After about 20 minutes, they should be nicely colored and crusted into a thick sheet.

  5. Carefully invert onto a hot platter.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the hash, with starch that browns and crisps on the hot surface.
Drippings
Conduct heat evenly and fry the potatoes, adding richness and browning flavor.
Onion juice
Adds savory aroma and flavor that carries through the potatoes.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, turning the pan occasionally. Gentle, even heat lets the potato surface brown and crust without burning before the centre heats through. Rushing on high heat scorches the outside and leaves the inside undercooked, so the sheet won't hold together when inverted.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper. 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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