Skip to main content
Main

Hashed Mutton

A slow‑cooked dish of sliced mutton simmered in broth with onions, flour, and catsup, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the cold mutton into slices.

  2. Remove the solid fat from the mutton and break the bones.

  3. Place the sliced mutton in a saucepan with the sliced onion.

  4. Pour in enough broth or stock to just cover the meat.

  5. Let it simmer at boiling heat without boiling.

Rest overnight

  1. Transfer the mixture to an earthen dish.

  2. Cover the dish and leave it overnight.

  3. In the morning, skim off the fat from the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the mixture to the pot.

  2. Add seasoning to taste and 2 teaspoons of flour.

  3. Let it simmer without boiling, pouring in milk as the meat dries.

  4. A quarter of an hour before serving, remove the bones and skin.

  5. Add walnut or mushroom catsup.

  6. Thicken the mixture with flour, oatmeal, or cornmeal mixed with milk and hash liquor.

  7. Boil for one more minute.

  8. Adjust seasoning if necessary.

  9. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mutton + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender and savoury as it simmers slowly.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour to the broth as it cooks down.
Broth or stock
Supplies liquid that gently cooks the meat and carries flavour through the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, cohesive sauce around the meat.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness as the meat dries during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes the liquid cloudy and greasy, while a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the sauce clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, meat, flour, milk, walnut, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, meat, flour, milk, walnut, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes