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Minced Mutton

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Heat the chopped mutton in the gravy.

  2. Add the catsup and butter, stirring to combine.

  3. Mix the flour with a little water to make a smooth paste.

  4. Add the paste to the mutton mixture to thicken.

  5. Serve the minced mutton 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

Mutton
Provides the main body of the dish as the meat that is heated and served.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce when mixed with water and stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the sauce.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity that season the minced meat.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour paste into the mutton. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water first, because dry flour added straight to hot liquid clumps instead of thickening evenly. Stirring the paste in gradually and keeping the mixture moving gives a uniform, smooth sauce.

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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