Name: Cokned Beef Hash
Ingredients: cold corn beef; cold chopped potatoes; water from cooking beef; fat from beef; milk (optional)

Why it works: Corn and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cokned Beef Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove all gristle and bone from the cold corned beef and chop it finely.
Add twice the amount of cold chopped potatoes to the beef.

Cook

Moisten the mixture with some of the water the beef was cooked in.
Grease a skillet with the fat that rises when the beef cools.
Warm the mixture through in the skillet.
Optionally, moisten with milk.

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.

Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together938 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + beeftop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,028 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold corned beef: Provides the main meat flavour and the body of the hash.
Cold chopped potatoes: Add starch and bulk, helping the hash hold together and brown.
Water from cooking beef: Adds moisture and savoury flavour from the cooked beef.
Fat from beef: Greases the skillet and adds rich flavour and browning.

“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.