Name: Beef Hash with Spaghetti
Ingredients: 1 lb spaghetti; ½ cup milk; ¼ lb cheese; 1 tablespoon butter; beef hash

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Beef Hash with Spaghetti

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.

Prepare

Cook the spaghetti according to package instructions, then wash and drain it.

Assemble and bake

In a baking pan, layer the spaghetti, cheese, and butter, adding a thick layer of beef hash between the layers.
Pour the milk over the layers.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until browned.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Cheese + beeftop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,193 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

What each ingredient does

Spaghetti: Forms the bulk of the dish and holds the layers together as a base.
Cheese: Melts and binds the layers while browning on top for flavor.
Beef hash: Provides the savory, meaty filling that gives the dish its main flavor and body.
Milk: Adds moisture that softens the pasta and helps form a creamy binding as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that helps browning and flavor in the baked layers.

The step that matters

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until browned. Baking until the top is browned develops flavor through the Maillard reaction, but overbaking can dry the layers. Watch color rather than only time so the milk stays creamy and the cheese stays tender.

“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.