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 ↓
Corned Beef Hash
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Mix the minced corned beef and cold baked potatoes in a bowl.
Grease a skillet and heat it over medium heat.
Cook and bake
Add the mixture to the skillet and cook until thoroughly heated.
Stir in the sweet milk and season with salt.
Transfer to a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) and bake for 20 minutes until a light crust forms.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,052 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
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Potato + milktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,611 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Beef + milktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,759 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Corned beef
- Provides the main savory flavor and meaty texture of the hash.
- Baked potatoes
- Supply starch and body that bind the hash and help it crisp on the surface.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture and softens the mixture so it stays tender rather than dry.
The step that matters
Baking until a light crust forms. Heat must brown the surface without drying the interior. Starch from the potatoes browns through the Maillard reaction, so the crust forms best when the hash is already hot and moist inside.
“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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