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Hash on Toast

Hash on Toast is a dish of diced potatoes and meat simmered in a brown sauce and served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hash on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a brown sauce using the butter and stock or water.

Heat and serve

  1. Heat the diced meat and potatoes in the brown sauce.

  2. Serve the mixture on top of the toast.

  3. Garnish with parsley and toast points.

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

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

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

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

  3. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Provides the main substance and savory flavor of the hash.
Cooked potatoes
Add body and soft texture, and help bulk out the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the sauce.
Stock
Supplies the liquid base that forms the sauce and adds savory flavor.

The step that matters

Heating the meat and potatoes in the sauce. The meat is already cooked, so it only needs to warm through. Boiling it hard toughens its proteins, and vigorous stirring can break the potatoes down into a mush.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, meat, butter, sauce. 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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