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Mutton Hash

A savory dish of minced mutton cooked with onions, gravy, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Mutton Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Put the bones in a pan with a little water and simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the gravy.

Make the hash

  1. Mince the cold left mutton very fine.

  2. Mince the onions.

  3. Brown the onions in a stew pan with a little dripping and flour.

  4. Add the gravy and simmer slowly for 20 minutes.

  5. Season the mince with pepper and coarse sea salt, then shake in flour and mix well.

  6. Stir the mixture into the pan and heat thoroughly.

  7. Serve.

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

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

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold left mutton
Forms the meat body of the hash and carries its main flavour.
Onions
Browning in fat builds sweetness and savoury depth into the gravy base.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and helps the mixture bind together.
Dripping (or oil)
Fat carries heat for browning the onions and adds richness.

The step that matters

Brown the onions in dripping and flour. Browning develops deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, while flour cooked in the fat loses its raw taste and helps thicken the gravy. Pale or burnt onions change the final flavour noticeably.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, 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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