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Mutton Hashed

A savory mutton hash served over toasted bread with pickles and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Hashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small, thin pieces.

  2. Boil the bones with the onion, sweet herbs, mace, whole pepper, coarse sea salt, and toasted crust until there is enough liquid for sauce.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Make the hash

  1. Pour the strained mixture into a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter rolled in flour and the mutton to the saucepan.

  3. Heat the saucepan until very hot.

  4. Season the hash with pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread until brown and cut it into triangles.

  2. Place the bread triangles in a dish.

  3. Pour the hash over the toasted bread.

  4. Garnish with pickles and horseradish.

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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 meat that forms the body of the hash.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a sauce and adds richness.
Toasted crust
Adds toasted, roasted flavour to the stock made from the bones.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness to the stock.
Thin bread
Forms a crisp base that the hash is served over.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid while heating; if it is added raw or left under-heated, the sauce tastes pasty and fails to thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

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