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Fish Hash

A dish of chopped fish and potatoes fried with bacon and seasoned with pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cooked fish and cold boiled potatoes into small pieces.

  2. Fry the sliced bacon in a skillet until crisp.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the fish and potatoes to the skillet and cook until heated through.

  2. Season with pepper to taste and 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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

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

  3. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked fish
Supplies the main protein and flavour, flaking into the hash as it heats.
Sliced bacon
Its rendered fat cooks the hash and adds savoury, smoky flavour.
Cold boiled potatoes
Their starch holds the hash together and helps the pieces brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Add the fish and potatoes to the skillet and cook until heated through.. The fish is already cooked, so it only needs warming. Cooking it too long toughens its proteins and dries it out, so heat it just until hot.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper. 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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