Name: A Good Way to Use Cold Mutton
Ingredients: cold cooked mutton, chopped fine; broth or water, as needed; butter, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste; buttered toast, for serving

Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Good Way to Use Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the cold cooked mutton fine.
Moisten the meat with a little broth or water.

Cook and serve

Season with butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.
Heat the mixture thoroughly.
Serve the hot mixture on slices of buttered toast.

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.

Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 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

Cold cooked mutton: Provides the main meat, which is fine-chopped so it heats evenly and spreads well on toast.
Broth or water: Adds moisture so the chopped meat stays tender rather than dry when heated.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the meat a smoother, more savoury mouthfeel.

“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.