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Administration Hash

A hash of boiled corn beef, soft potatoes, onions, and garlic, fried with lard and garnished with fried onions and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Administration Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hash

  1. Chop the boiled corn beef as fine as possible.

  2. Cut the soft mealy potatoes into tiny cubes.

  3. Mix the chopped beef, potato cubes, and minced onion thoroughly.

Cook the hash

  1. Rub a skillet with a head of garlic and add the mixture.

  2. Wrap another head of garlic in a piece of fat and place it in the center of the mixture.

  3. Brown the mixture nicely in the skillet.

Fry the onions and serve

  1. Slice Bermuda onions into disks, showing every ring.

  2. Fry the onion disks in a deep dish of pure lard until crisp.

  3. Garnish the edge of the platter with the fried onion disks and serve the hash with parsley or herbs.

  4. Serve with a squeeze of lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled corn beef
Provides the meaty base and savory flavor of the hash.
Soft mealy potatoes
Break down slightly while browning, giving the hash body and crisp edges.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and moisture that carries through the mixture as it cooks.
Pure lard
Conducts heat for frying and encourages browning and crispness on the surface.

The step that matters

Browning the mixture. Pressing the hash and leaving it undisturbed in a hot pan lets the starches and proteins brown into a crust. Stirring too often or using a cool pan steams the mixture instead, leaving it soft and grey.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, beef, potato, onion, garlic, parsley):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, beef, potato, onion, garlic, parsley. 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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