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Mutton Hodge Podge

A stew of tinned mutton, onions, peas, butter, water, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Hodge Podge

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the mutton and onions

  1. Remove the jelly and gravy from the mutton and place it in a stewpan with sliced onions.

  2. Stew until the onions are tender, then add seasoning and ¼ pint of water.

Add the peas and finish

  1. Boil the peas in another saucepan for a few minutes, then drain and add to the onions.

  2. Finally, add the mutton to the stewpan just to heat through.

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

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

  2. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the main body of the dish and gives its savoury meaty flavour.
Onions
Soften during stewing, adding sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Peas
Add bulk, a soft texture and mild sweetness to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Adding the mutton at the end. The mutton is already cooked from the tin, so it only needs to heat through. Prolonged boiling toughens meat proteins and dries the meat, so keep the heat gentle and the time short.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Peasthe original
  4. Sesamefits about as well

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