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Minced Mutton

A dish of finely minced mutton mixed with a spiced gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Minced Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Remove all fat, gristle, and sinew from the mutton meat.

  2. Place bones and trimmings in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and add onion, mace, clove, peppercorns, and bouquet garni.

  3. Mix flour with a little cold water to form a paste and add to the saucepan.

  4. Simmer until the gravy is flavorful, then strain and season with salt and a few drops of sugar browning.

  5. Let the gravy sit to allow fat to rise, then remove the fat.

Finish the minced mutton

  1. Finely mince the meat or pass it through a sausage machine.

  2. Combine the minced meat with just enough gravy to moisten it.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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

Meat from the neck of mutton
Provides the main meaty flavour and the body of the dish.
Flour
Mixed with water to form a paste that thickens the gravy slightly.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic depth to the gravy as it simmers.
Sugar browning
Adds colour and a deeper, slightly bittersweet flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Removing the fat from the gravy. Fat that is not skimmed after the gravy rests will separate on the surface and make the minced mutton greasy and heavy. Letting it sit allows the fat to rise so it can be lifted off cleanly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mutton, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mutton, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, 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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