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Hashed Mutton

A savory dish of mutton pieces simmered in a spiced butter and stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced eschalots and flour, stirring for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour in the stock, adding salt, pepper, clove, allspice, bouquet garni, walnut ketchup, and tomato sauce.

  4. Stir continuously until boiling, then boil for a few minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce into another saucepan and let it cool.

Add the mutton and serve

  1. Once cool, add the pieces of mutton to the sauce.

  2. Warm the mixture over low heat, shaking the pan occasionally without boiling.

  3. Serve warm with fried bread sippets.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Sweet butter
Melts to form the fat base that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Cooks with the butter and thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the mutton is warmed in.
Eschalots
Add savoury, aromatic sweetness as they soften in the butter.
Cold mutton
Provides the meat that is gently warmed through in the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the mutton gently without boiling. Boiling a sauce containing cooked meat toughens the proteins and can make the meat dry and stringy, so low heat keeps it tender.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, clove, allspice, walnut, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, clove, allspice, walnut, 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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