Skip to main content
Main

Minced Corned Beef

A pan‑fried dish of finely chopped corned beef and potato, seasoned with pepper and served with parsley.

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

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 ↓

Minced Corned Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the corned beef and potato very finely.

  2. Mix the chopped beef and potato together.

Cook

  1. Heat a frying pan and add a good-sized piece of butter.

  2. Add the mixture to the pan with a little pepper.

  3. Stir frequently until very hot.

  4. Let it sit until the bottom is browned.

Serve

  1. Turn onto a flat dish and garnish 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 + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Corned beef
Provides the main savory meat flavor and chewy texture in the hash.
Potato
Adds starch and body, helping the hash hold together while it cooks.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and browning to the crust.
Pepper
Adds a mild, sharp aroma that seasons the meat and potato.

The step that matters

Let it sit until the bottom is browned. Leaving the hash undisturbed lets its underside form a crisp, browned crust through the Maillard reaction. Stirring too often prevents this and leaves the hash soft and greyish.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Rosemaryfits less well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, butter, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes