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To Hash Mutton

A dish of thinly sliced mutton cooked with onion, gravy, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Hash Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flour the slices of mutton.

Make the hash

  1. Combine the boiled onion with the water, gravy, and seasoned meat in a pan.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot, but do not boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a covered dish.

  2. For a different flavor, add a clove, currant jelly, and port wine.

  3. Warm pickled cucumber or walnuts in the dish for variety.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  3. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 fat and lean portions give the hash its body and savour.
Flour
Coats the meat slices, helping them brown lightly and thickening the gravy slightly.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the hash once softened by boiling.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and flavour so the meat does not dry out when heated.

The step that matters

Heat until hot, but do not boil. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the meat dry and stringy, so gentle heating keeps the mutton tender and moist.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, onion, pepper, currant, port wine, cucumber):

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, onion, pepper, currant, port wine, cucumber. 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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