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A Mutton Hash

A savory hash of mutton pieces cooked in gravy with onions, shallots, capers, and gherkin, served over toasted bread.

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

Prepare

  1. Dust the mutton pieces with flour.

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

Make the hash

  1. Add the mutton to the gravy with a small piece of butter rolled in flour and a little salt.

  2. Add the finely chopped shallot, capers, and gherkin; toss everything together for 1–2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the toasted slices around a serving dish and pour the hash in the center.

  2. 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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it warms in the gravy.
Flour
Coats the mutton and butter, thickening the gravy so the hash clings together.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce as it melts in.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the meat and gravy.
Gherkin
Adds tangy acidity and a crisp, sour bite to balance the rich meat.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour. Flour-coated butter must be stirred into the simmering gravy so it melts and thickens smoothly; added all at once or unmixed, the flour can clump and leave the sauce lumpy.

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.

“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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