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French Hash

A baked hash of potatoes, cold meat, egg, butter, lemon juice, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Hash

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. Chop the cold meat and potatoes finely.

Mix and shape

  1. Mix with the beaten egg, salt, pepper, butter, lemon juice, and enough cream to moisten.

  2. Form the mixture into a roll.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake on a biscuit pan at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with drawn butter poured around the roll.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the chopped meat and potato so the roll holds its shape while baking.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, giving the hash a soft, tender body.
Cream
Adds moisture so the mixture holds together without drying out in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the surface brown and the flavour feel rounder.
Cold meat
Provides the main savoury flavour and substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Enough cream to moisten. Too little cream leaves the mixture crumbly and unable to hold a roll shape, while too much makes it soggy and slack. Adding it gradually until the mixture just holds together gives a firm but moist roll.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, meat, egg, pepper, butter, cream. 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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