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Hash Mutton

Hash Mutton is a dish of thinly sliced mutton cooked in gravy with onions, pepper, and herbs, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hash Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strew a little flour over the thinly cut mutton.

  2. Prepare gravy with boiled sweet herbs, onions, pepper, and salt.

Make the hash

  1. Add the mutton to the gravy along with the butter, shallot, and capers.

  2. Toss everything together for 1-2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the toasted slices around a dish.

  2. Pour the hash into the center and garnish with pickles and horseradish.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main cooked meat, which becomes tender in the warm gravy.
Flour
Lightly coats the thin mutton slices and helps thicken the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the gravy.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the gravy.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich meat.

The step that matters

Toss everything together for 1-2 minutes. Tossing briefly warms the mutton through and lets it absorb gravy without overcooking. Holding it too long toughens the meat and thickens the sauce too much.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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