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Hashed Brown Potatoes

A dish of chopped boiled potatoes sautéed in salt pork fat, browned and folded like an omelet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Hashed Brown Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a medium-sized omelet pan, heat enough fat from salt pork to yield ⅓ cup; remove the pieces of pork.

  2. Add the finely chopped cold boiled potatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper, to the fat.

Brown and serve

  1. Stir constantly over the fire for about 2 minutes, then press gently to make them compact.

  2. Place the pan where it will brown slowly; if using a gas range, place an asbestos mat under the pan and turn the flame as low as possible.

  3. When nicely browned, which will take about 15 minutes, fold over like an omelet, turn onto a hot platter, and serve.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dish; their starch crisps and browns when pressed into hot fat.
Fat from salt pork
Conducts heat evenly and carries flavour, helping the potatoes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Pressing and browning slowly. Pressing the potatoes into a compact layer gives full contact with the hot fat, and low, slow heat lets the surface brown without scorching before the centre heats through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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.

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