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Hashed Brown Potatoes

A dish of finely chopped boiled potatoes sautéed in salt pork fat with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Hashed Brown Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the potatoes

  1. Render fat from salt pork in a skillet.

  2. Add finely chopped cold boiled potatoes, pepper, and salt if needed.

  3. Mix thoroughly and cook for three minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Let the mixture stand to brown underneath.

Serve

  1. Fold like an omelet and turn onto a hot platter.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fat from salt pork
Fries the potatoes and carries flavour, while browning the underside to a crisp crust.
Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dish; cold potatoes hold their shape and crisp better when fried.
Pepper
Adds mild, sharp aroma and seasoning to the potatoes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand to brown underneath. Leaving the potatoes undisturbed lets the bottom form a browned crust through contact with hot fat. Stirring too early keeps the mixture soft and pale, so the crisp base does not form.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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.

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