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Fresh Mutton Mince

A simple stew of diced mutton cooked with butter, onion, flour, and stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fresh Mutton Mince

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the lean part from a neck or loin of mutton.

  2. Trim away the fat and skin.

  3. Cut the meat into small dice.

Cook

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sauté until soft.

  3. Stir in the diced mutton and cook until browned.

  4. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir well.

  5. Add the stock or water, and season with salt and pepper.

  6. Simmer until the mutton is cooked through.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Provides the main meat, whose lean protein firms and browns during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps brown the meat and onion.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Stir in the diced mutton and cook until browned. Browning the meat in fat creates flavourful Maillard compounds. Crowding the pan or stopping too early steams the meat grey and leaves the mince bland.

Swap the onion

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

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

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