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Hashed Brown Potatoes

Hashed brown potatoes are fried diced potatoes with butter and lard, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hashed Brown Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stir the chopped potatoes, salt, pepper, and parsley together in a bowl.

  2. Heat the butter and lard in a frying pan until smoking hot.

Fry and brown

  1. Add the potato mixture to the pan and fry for about 5 minutes, stirring thoroughly.

  2. Press the mixture down flat and cover.

  3. Fry for 15 to 20 minutes.

  4. Loosen the edges with a knife, place a plate over the top, and turn upside down to brown the bottom.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, with their starch crisping as they fry in fat.
Butter
Adds flavor and helps the potatoes brown in the pan.
Lard
Fat that tolerates high heat, helping the potatoes fry crisp without burning.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until smoking hot before adding the potatoes. Very hot fat sears the potato surface quickly, so it crisps and browns instead of absorbing grease and steaming. Adding potatoes to cool fat leads to soggy, greasy hash browns.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, butter. 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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