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Minced Mutton

A dish of finely chopped cold mutton cooked in gravy with catsup and butter, thickened with flour, served with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minced Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and heat

  1. Chop the cold mutton finely.

  2. Heat the mutton in gravy.

  3. Add the catsup and butter.

  4. Thicken with flour mixed in water.

Serve

  1. Serve on a platter surrounded by mashed potatoes.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold mutton
Provides the main meat, which is cut fine so it heats evenly in the gravy.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid and savoury flavour that moistens the minced meat.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and tang that balance the savoury gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour mixed in water. Flour added dry clumps and stays lumpy. Mixing it into cold water first makes a smooth slurry, which should be stirred into the simmering liquid and cooked briefly so the starch swells and thickens evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour. 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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