We study the recognition capabilities of the Hopfield model with auxiliary hidden layers, which emerge naturally upon a Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation. We show that the recognition capabilities of such a model at zero-temperature outperform those of the original Hopfield model, due to a substantial increase of the storage capacity and the lack of a naturally defined basin of attraction. The modified model does not fall abruptly in a regime of complete confusion when memory load exceeds a sharp threshold.