Skip to main content
Main

Hashed Potatoes

Hashed potatoes are baked potatoes shredded and cooked with milk, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the baked potatoes, leaving the brown underskin.

  2. Chop the peeled potatoes very fine.

Make the mixture

  1. Combine the milk and butter in an iron pan.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and salt.

  3. Heat the mixture until the butter melts and the milk is scalding hot.

Cook

  1. Add the chopped potatoes to the pan and cover the pan.

  2. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes, lifting the potatoes from the bottom of the pan occasionally to prevent burning. Do not stir.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Baked potatoes
Provide the starchy base that softens into the bulk of the hash brown mixture.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, helping the potatoes cook into a soft, tender mass.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and helps the mixture cook smoothly in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat without stirring. Stirring breaks the chopped potato into a paste and releases more starch, making it gummy. Covering on low heat cooks the potato gently, and occasionally lifting from the bottom keeps it from scorching while the base browns.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes