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Hashed Mutton Like Venison

A savory sauce of gravy, port wine, catsup, sugar, onion, and cloves simmered with sliced mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and clove work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 914 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the rich gravy, port wine, catsup, pounded sugar, minced onion, and cloves.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 12 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce and return it to the pan.

Finish the dish

  1. Add the sliced mutton and let it simmer for 3 minutes.

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. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Port wine + muttontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Onion + muttontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

  5. Port wine + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce as it reduces.
Sliced mutton
Is the meat that is heated through and flavoured in the sauce.
Catsup
Adds sweet-tangy acidity and savoury depth to the sauce.
Minced onion
Contributes savoury aroma and body to the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer the mutton gently. Once the mutton is added, a gentle simmer heats it through without boiling it hard. Vigorous boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the slices dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, sugar, clove, mutton):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, sugar, clove, mutton. 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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