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Mutton Kromeskis

A savory dish of minced mutton wrapped in bacon, battered, and fried in boiling lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mutton Kromeskis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the scraps of mutton as finely as possible with half the quantity of tinned mushrooms.

  2. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour with 1 cup of cold gravy or 1 cup of water with half a packet of meat extract until smooth.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt. Stir over heat until thickened.

  4. Add the minced meat and mushrooms, mix well, and let it cool on a plate.

Wrap the bacon

  1. Slice the bacon thinly, about ½ inch wide and 2 inches long.

  2. Fill each bacon slice with the meat mixture, roll it up, and tie with white cotton if desired.

  3. Optionally, rub each bacon piece with a cut clove of garlic before adding the mutton.

Make the batter and fry

  1. Melt 1 oz. of butter in a cup with boiling water. Fill with cold water and mix with 3 oz. of flour to make a batter.

  2. Soak and beat the albumen. Stir it lightly into the batter just before using.

  3. Dip each kromeski into the batter. Drop them into boiling lard until golden.

  4. Drain on paper. Serve heaped on a hot napkin.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

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

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton scraps
Provide the main meaty filling, bound into a soft mixture by the thickened gravy.
Fat bacon
Wraps the filling and crisps in the lard, adding savoury fat and flavour.
Albumen
Beaten egg white lightens the batter so it puffs and crisps when fried.
Flour
Thickens the gravy for the filling and forms the body of the batter.
Tinned mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the minced filling.

The step that matters

Stir the albumen in just before using. Beaten egg white loses its air quickly once mixed into the batter, so adding it late keeps the coating light and crisp when it hits the hot lard.

“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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