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A Mutton Hash

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Mutton Hash

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sprinkle a little flour over the mutton bits.

  2. Prepare gravy with sweet herbs, onions, pepper, and salt; strain it.

  3. Add the mutton to the gravy with butter, salt, shallot, capers, and gherkin.

  4. Toss everything together for 1-2 minutes.

  5. Arrange toasted bread slices around a dish and pour the hash in the center.

  6. Garnish with pickles and horseradish.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, sauce, pepper, butter, shallot, capers):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, sauce, pepper, butter, shallot, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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