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To Hash Cold Mutton

A hash of cold mutton cooked with onion, herbs, mace, pepper, salt, crust, butter, flour, and served with toasted bread and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Hash Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold mutton into very thin bits using a sharp knife.

  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.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the liquid and return it to a saucepan with the butter rolled in flour.

  2. Add the mutton to the saucepan and heat until very hot.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread until brown, cut it into triangles, and arrange it around a serving dish.

  2. Pour the hot mutton mixture into the center of the dish and garnish with pickles.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Cold mutton
Provides the main body of the hash, heated through in the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness when rolled in flour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce when combined with butter.

The step that matters

Adding the mutton to the sauce. Heating the mutton only until very hot keeps the meat tender; prolonged boiling toughens and dries it, and the flour-thickened sauce can scorch if left unstirred over heat.

Swap the mace

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

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

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