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Frickadel of Mutton

Mutton frickadel are meatballs made from minced mutton, bacon, onion, parsley, spices, and eggs, stewed in brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Frickadel of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the mutton and soaked bacon together with the onion, parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the eggs and shape it into a large sausage.

  3. Tie the sausage in a piece of buttered muslin.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the sausage gently in brown sauce for 2 hours, adding an extra 30 minutes if using fresh meat.

  2. Remove the muslin and strain the sauce over the meat before serving.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the main body of the meat mixture and gives it its rich, savoury flavour.
Eggs
Bind the minced mixture so it holds together when shaped and stewed.
Bacon
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the lean mutton from drying out during stewing.

The step that matters

Stewing the sausage gently. Simmering slowly keeps the egg-bound meat tender and prevents it from breaking apart or toughening. A rapid boil can make the proteins tighten and the sausage crumble.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, milk, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, egg, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, milk, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, egg, sauce. 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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