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Hash, American, Corned Beef

A hash of corned beef and mashed potatoes cooked in butter or dripping, served hot with parsley and toast or fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Hash, American, Corned Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the corned beef and mashed potatoes in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with stock, starting with ½ cup and adding more if needed.

Cook

  1. Heat the butter or dripping in a shallow pan.

  2. Add the mixture to the pan and cook until browned, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with parsley and toast or fried bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

Corned beef
Provides the main meaty body and savoury flavour of the hash.
Mashed potatoes
Bind the meat together and give the hash its soft, moist texture.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat for frying and helps the surface brown richly.
Stock
Moistens the mixture so it holds together and stays tender while cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture until browned. The mixture needs time without constant stirring to form a crisp, browned crust, which adds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Stirring only occasionally lets the surface contact the hot pan, so the hash browns instead of steaming.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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