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Fricassee of Mutton

A creamy sauce of butter, flour, milk, and clarified dripping served over canned mutton and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fricassee of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, pepper, and salt until combined.

  3. Gradually add ¾ cup of cold milk, stirring until it boils and thickens.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Peel the mushrooms and trim the stalks.

  2. Add the mushrooms to the sauce and simmer until tender.

  3. Wash the mushroom peels and stalks, then simmer them in a small saucepan with ½ cup of milk to extract flavor.

Prepare the mutton and bread

  1. Open the canned mutton, remove excess fat, and cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Cut bread into small squares, then diagonally into triangles.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. Heat the clarified dripping in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Fry the bread triangles until pale brown, then drain on paper towels.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and keep warm.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned mutton
Forms the meat base of the dish, supplying its main flavor and substance.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the fat and then the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and tender texture to the sauce.
Clarified dripping
Fries the bread, giving it a golden brown color and crisp surface.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the butter and flour. Adding cold milk gradually while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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