Name: To Hash Mutton Like Venison
Ingredients: thinly sliced mutton; bones from the mutton; ¼ pint gravy; 1 tablespoon red wine; 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped; a little lemon peel, finely shredded; 1 tablespoon butter (about the size of a small walnut), rolled in flour

Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Hash Mutton Like Venison

Ingredients

thinly sliced mutton
bones from the mutton
¼ pint gravy
1 tablespoon red wine
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
a little lemon peel, finely shredded
1 tablespoon butter (about the size of a small walnut), rolled in flour

Directions

Prepare

Boil the bones and strain the liquid, keeping enough for the hash.

Make and serve the hash

In a saucepan, combine the gravy, red wine, chopped onion, lemon peel, and butter.
Add the mutton to the saucepan and shake together.
Heat thoroughly and serve in a dish.

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.

Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,832 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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: Forms the meat base of the hash, giving it the main body and flavour.
Bones from the mutton: Boiled to make a strained liquid that adds savoury depth to the hash.
Gravy: Provides the moist sauce that coats the meat and keeps it from drying out.
Red wine: Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury flavour as it softens in the sauce.
Butter: Rolled in flour, it melts into the liquid and thickens the sauce, adding richness.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, red wine, onion, butter, walnut, flour):

Pearfits better
Plumfits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, red wine, onion, butter, walnut, flour. 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.