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Hashed Mutton

A stew of cold mutton pieces with gravy, vegetables, and buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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

Make the gravy

  1. Season the cold mutton pieces with pepper and salt.

  2. Place the bones and trimmings in a saucepan.

  3. Cover the bones and trimmings with water and add sliced onions.

  4. Stew until a good gravy is formed.

  5. Skim and strain the gravy into a stew-pan.

Heat the meat and vegetables

  1. Add the mutton to the gravy.

  2. Slice the boiled carrots, turnips, potatoes, and onions.

  3. Add the sliced vegetables to the meat and gravy.

  4. Set the pan over hot coals.

  5. Simmer until the meat is warmed through, avoiding boiling.

Serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a dish with slices of buttered toast.

  2. Lay the meat and vegetables on the toast.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat and vegetables.

  4. Optionally add tomatoes.

  5. Serve green peas or Lima beans separately.

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

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which is warmed through in the gravy rather than cooked hard.
Bones and trimmings
Release flavour and body into the water as they stew, forming the gravy.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the gravy as it stews.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, giving the hash substance and body.
Butter
Enriches the toast with fat and browning, giving the base flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer the meat gently. Boiling toughens the meat proteins and can make the mutton dry and stringy, so it should only be kept at a gentle simmer until 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, butter):

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

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