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Feicassee of Mutton

A creamy mutton stew with mushrooms, butter, flour, milk, and bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Feicassee of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, pepper, and salt until combined.

  3. Pour in ¾ cup of cold milk and stir until it boils and thickens.

  4. Peel the mushrooms and trim the stalks.

  5. Add the mushrooms to the sauce and simmer until tender.

  6. Wash the mushroom peels and stalks, then simmer them in a small saucepan with ½ cup of milk to extract flavor.

Prepare the mutton and bread

  1. Open the canned mutton, remove the fat, and cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Cut the bread into small squares, then diagonally into triangles.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. Heat the clarified dripping in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Fry the bread triangles until pale brown, then drain on kitchen paper.

  3. Sprinkle with a little salt 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Starch thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, body-rich sauce as it heats.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth texture.
Milk
Liquid base that, with the flour, forms the creamy body of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.
Clarified dripping
Hot fat that fries the bread, browning its surface and crisping it.
Bread
Fried into crisp, golden triangles that contrast with the soft sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk into the sauce. Flour starch swells and thickens only when the liquid heats, so stir steadily while the milk comes to a boil. Adding milk too fast or skipping the stirring leaves lumps and an uneven sauce.

“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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