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Hashed Mutton

A savory sauce of butter, onion, flour, stock, and ketchup served over sliced cold mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the chopped onion until golden brown.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the stock, cloves, and salt if needed.

  4. Stir in the tomato ketchup.

  5. Cook the sauce for a few minutes.

  6. Add Worcestershire sauce and mushroom and walnut ketchups to taste.

  7. Let the sauce boil to reduce slightly.

Finish and prepare the mutton

  1. Strain the sauce into a shallow pan and set aside to cool.

  2. Slice the cold mutton into neat pieces, removing any skin, fat, or gristle.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and helps the onion brown in the pan.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it browns in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in the butter, giving it body.
Tomato ketchup
Adds tangy acidity and color to the sauce.
Mutton
Forms the main meat that is sliced and served in the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Flour must be cooked for a few minutes so it loses its raw taste and thickens the sauce smoothly. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty flavor and can make lumps when liquid is added.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, flour, tomato, ketchup, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, tomato, ketchup, sauce, mushroom. 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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