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Minced Mutton

A sauce of minced mutton, butter, gherkins, and stock served with thin bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Minced Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Mince the meat from a cold roast leg of mutton and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Make a roux and moisten it with a little stock, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. Reduce the sauce, then add a piece of butter and some gherkins.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the mincemeat with the sauce and cook gently without boiling.

  2. Serve with thin slices of bread around the dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Meat + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

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

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Meat from a cold roast leg of mutton
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides the main meaty flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sauce.
Stock
Moistens the roux and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Gherkins
Add a sharp, acidic note that cuts through the richness of the meat and butter.

The step that matters

Cook gently without boiling. Once the mincemeat is combined with the sauce, boiling can toughen the meat proteins and cause the sauce to break or reduce unevenly, so gentle heat keeps the texture tender and 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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