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Hashed Muttox

A savory hash of mutton, onion, and pickles cooked in a brown butter and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hashed Muttox

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew-pan, heat 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour until brown.

  2. Add more butter to achieve a cream-like consistency.

  3. Stir in the chopped onion and cook until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the mutton into 1-inch pieces and add to the sauce.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, ketchup, and gherkins or pickles.

  3. Heat thoroughly and serve hot.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Browned with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Mutton
Provides the meat, whose lean and fat portions give the dish its body and flavour.
Onion
Softens as it cooks, adding sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Ketchup or harvey sauce
Adds tangy, sweet-sour flavour that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour cooked in butter must be stirred steadily until it reaches the stated brown colour. Undercooked roux tastes raw and pasty, while over-browned roux turns bitter and loses thickening power.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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