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Savory Hash

A hash made with cooked lentils, boiled potatoes, bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings, served with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Savory Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the lentils, potatoes, and bread crumbs. Pour the melted butter over the mixture and season with savory, soup powder, sage, and chopped onion as preferred.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a frying pan, then add the hash mixture.

  2. Cover and cook until thoroughly heated, then remove the cover and let it brown.

  3. Serve on a platter garnished with parsley.

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. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Lentils + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked brown lentils
Provides the main body and bulk of the hash, binding with the potatoes.
Cold boiled potatoes
Adds starch and body, helping the hash hold together while it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the mixture into a cohesive hash.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, moistening the mixture and aiding browning in the pan.

The step that matters

Let it brown uncovered. Covering the pan traps steam to heat the hash through, so the cover must come off for the surface to dry and brown. Browning depends on that drier surface and direct pan contact.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, bread, butter, sage, onion, parsley):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, bread, butter, sage, onion, parsley. 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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