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Hashed Mutton

A hash of thinly sliced cold mutton cooked with butter, gravy, catsup, and served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Hashed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the cold mutton into thin slices, ensuring they are free from veins and skin.

  2. Dredge the slices with a little flour and season with pepper and salt.

Cook the hash

  1. In a stewpan, melt a bit of butter and add the mutton slices along with a little gravy.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot, but do not let it boil.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of walnut or mushroom catsup.

Serve

  1. Serve the hash on slices of toasted bread.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 meat that forms the body of the hash.
Flour
Dredging coats the slices, helping them brown lightly and thickening the gravy slightly.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the slices brown in the stewpan.
Gravy
Supplies moisture so the meat stays tender when heated.
Walnut or mushroom catsup
Adds a concentrated, savoury tang that deepens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat until hot but do not boil. Boiling toughens cooked meat and can make the thickened gravy separate or turn grainy. Gentle heating warms the mutton through while keeping it tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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