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Hashed Mutton, with Hard Dumplings

A dish of chopped mutton sautéed with onions, served with hard dumplings made from flour, baking powder, milk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Hashed Mutton, with Hard Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the hash

  1. In a skillet, melt butter and sauté onion until soft.

  2. Add chopped mutton, salt, and pepper; cook until heated through.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Stir in milk and parsley to form a dough.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of dough into boiling water; cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Serve the hashed mutton with the dumplings.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 hash, providing the meaty base of the dish.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure of the dumplings as its proteins set during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Milk
Moistens the flour into a dough and adds richness and tenderness to the dumplings.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps soften the onion in the skillet.

The step that matters

Drop the dough into gently boiling water. The dumplings set as they cook, so the water should be boiling when the dough goes in. If it is too cool, the dumplings can turn heavy and gummy instead of light and tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, pepper, flour, milk, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, pepper, flour, milk, parsley. 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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