Skip to main content
Main

Hashed Mutton

A stew of mutton, vegetables, and gravy served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Cut the lean cold mutton into small pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the bones and trimmings in a saucepan, cover with water, and add sliced onions. Stew until a good gravy forms.

  3. Skim the gravy, strain it into a stew-pan, and add the mutton.

Cook the vegetables and meat

  1. Boil the carrots, turnips, potatoes, and onions, then slice and add to the meat and gravy.

  2. Simmer the mixture until the meat is warmed through, avoiding boiling.

Serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a dish with slices of buttered toast, lay the meat and vegetables on top, and pour the gravy over them.

  2. Optionally add tomatoes or serve with boiled green peas or Lima beans.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean cold mutton
Provides the main meat, which is gently rewarmed so it stays tender rather than toughening.
Bones and trimmings from mutton
Release collagen and flavour into the water, building a rich, body-giving gravy.
Buttered toast
Soaks up the gravy at the base, giving the dish a soft, moist foundation.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, thickening the gravy slightly and filling out the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture gently. Boiling toughens the protein in the meat and can make it dry and stringy, so the mixture should only be kept hot until the meat is warmed through.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, onion, carrot, turnip, potato, peas):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, onion, carrot, turnip, potato, peas. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipes