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Minced Mutton

A savory gravy made from minced cold cooked mutton, butter, flour, stock, herbs, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Minced Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat, skin, and gristle from the mutton and mince it finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until browned.

  2. Gradually pour in the stock and add the minced mutton, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stir over heat until boiling, then move to the side.

  4. Quickly stir in the beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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
Provides the main meat, which is cooked gently in the sauce so it stays tender.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries the flour, adding richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce and adds savoury depth.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce gently when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce is boiling when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Stirring quickly and off direct heat keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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