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Hashed Potatoes

A dish of minced cold‑boiled potatoes cooked with butter, milk or stock, seasoned with salt and pepper, optionally garnished with parsley or onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold-boiled potatoes and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Add milk or stock and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt butter in a hot omelet pan.

  2. Pour in the potato mixture, spread evenly, and let brown.

  3. Fold over like an omelet and serve, garnished with parsley or onion if desired.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and turn golden and crisp on the surface while staying soft inside.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the potatoes brown and gives a rich flavor.
Milk or stock
Adds moisture that softens the potato mixture so it spreads and cooks evenly.

The step that matters

Letting the potatoes brown undisturbed. The potatoes must be spread evenly in a hot, buttered pan and left alone long enough to form a crust. Stirring or moving them too early prevents browning and leaves the potatoes soggy.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, milk, butter):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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