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Hashed Potatoes

A simple dish of diced boiled potatoes cooked with milk, butter, flour, pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. In a bowl, combine diced potatoes, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add milk and transfer to a saucepan.

Cook

  1. Cook over medium heat until scalding hot.

  2. Mix butter and flour together, then add to the saucepan.

  3. Stir in minced parsley and cook until the milk thickens.

  4. Serve hot.

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
Provide the bulk of the dish, with starch that softens and holds the mixture together.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that cooks into a creamy, thickened sauce around the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Cook until the milk thickens. Flour thickens milk only as it heats and its starch swells. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while overcooking can scorch the milk on the bottom of the pan, so stir steadily over medium heat.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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