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Hashed Mutton with Bacon

A savory dish of sliced mutton simmered in a herb‑infused gravy with mushrooms, served with bacon rolls and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Hashed Mutton with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Trim the cold mutton of skin and fat, then dredge with flour.

  2. In a saucepan, combine bones, herbs, peppercorns, onion, and mushroom trimmings with cold water, and boil until flavorful.

  3. Strain the gravy, return it to the saucepan, and thicken with 1 teaspoon flour mixed with cold water for every ½ pint of gravy.

  4. Add halved mushrooms, red currant jelly, and salt, and simmer until the mushrooms are cooked.

Combine and chill

  1. Add mutton slices and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. If using ketchup instead of mushrooms, omit the salt.

  3. Place mutton in a pie dish, pour the sauce over, and refrigerate overnight.

Reheat and serve

  1. Reheat gently in a double boiler or saucepan without boiling.

  2. Serve hot with bacon rolls and fried 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + red curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Slices of cold mutton
Provide the main meat, which is gently heated in the sauce so it stays tender.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the mutton and holds the sauce together.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich, savoury gravy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Reheat gently without boiling. Boiling a sauce containing flour-thickened gravy and meat can make it break or toughen the mutton, so gentle heat keeps the texture smooth and the meat tender.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, parsley, thyme, onion, mushroom, 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.

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