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Mutton, Minced

A dish of minced mutton simmered with broth, anchovy butter, and served with boiled endive leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mince

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add enough flour to absorb the butter and stir over low heat until light brown.

  3. Add the minced mutton and the broth made from the bone and ham.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, then mix well.

  5. Simmer gently for 30 minutes without boiling.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in the anchovy butter.

Prepare the endive

  1. Prepare the endive by boiling the leaves in salted water, then cooling and chopping them.

  2. Heat the chopped endive in a clean stewpan with a little white sauce.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, then add the egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Serve the endive around the minced mutton.

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. Nutmeg + endivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + endivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + endivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the flavour and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens the mince.
Flour
Absorbs the butter and, once cooked, thickens the broth into a smooth sauce.
Cooked mutton
Provides the main meat and body of the dish.
Broth
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the minced meat.
Egg yolks
Enrich the endive sauce and help it set to a creamy texture.
Anchovy butter
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the mince.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter until light brown. Cooking the roux over low heat until light brown thickens the liquid and adds nutty flavour. Too much heat can scorch it, leaving a bitter taste and dark specks in the sauce.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mutton, ham, pepper, nutmeg, anchovy. 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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