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To Hash Mutton

A dish of diced mutton cooked with onions, gravy, pepper, salt, currant jelly, wine, and walnut pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Hash Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small pieces.

  2. Fry the onions until brown.

Make the hash

  1. Add the mutton to the onions in a little good gravy.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, currant jelly, and wine or walnut pickle just before serving.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  3. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Onion + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Is the main protein, cooked in gravy until tender enough to shred into the hash.
Onions
Browning them first builds a sweet, savoury base that flavours the whole hash.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruitiness that balances the rich, savoury meat.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Browning caramelises the onions' natural sugars through the Maillard reaction, creating deeper flavour. Pale onions leave the hash tasting flat and raw.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, pepper, wine, walnut):

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, pepper, wine, walnut. 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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