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Baked Hashed Potatoes, with Cream

A baked potato hash with cream, cream sauce, and bread crumbs, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Hashed Potatoes, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the potatoes as directed in No. 1167.

Make the hash

  1. When the cream is nearly reduced, add the cream sauce and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Toss the mixture well and transfer it to a buttered baking dish.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle fresh bread crumbs over the top and place a piece of butter on top.

  2. Wipe off the edges of the dish and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the cream and sauce as they bake.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, reducing down to coat the potatoes.
Cream sauce
Adds body and a smooth, savory binding to the mixture.
Fresh bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the topping brown and turn golden.

The step that matters

Wipe off the edges of the dish. Cream and butter that spill onto the dish edges can scorch and burn in the hot oven. Wiping them clean keeps the edges from darkening or smoking before the top is golden.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce, pepper, nutmeg, butter, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, pepper, nutmeg, butter, bread. 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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