Skip to main content
Main

Beef Hash with Spaghetti

A baked casserole of spaghetti, cheese, butter, milk, and beef hash.

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

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

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

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking pan, layer the spaghetti, cheese, and butter, adding a thick layer of beef hash between the layers.

  2. Pour the milk over the layers.

  3. 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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. 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 and structure of the casserole, holding the layers together as it bakes.
Cheese
Melts into the layers, adding richness and helping bind the casserole together.
Milk
Adds moisture that soaks into the layers and keeps the casserole from drying out.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Beef hash
Provides the savory, meaty filling between the layers.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Baking long enough lets the cheese melt and the top brown, which develops flavor through browning. Stopping too early leaves the casserole pale and loose, while over-baking can dry out the milk-soaked layers.

“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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes