Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Hashed Mutton
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the mutton
Cut the cold mutton into slices and remove the solid fat.
Break the bones and place the sliced mutton in a saucepan with the sliced onion.
Pour enough broth or stock to just cover the meat.
Let it simmer at boiling heat without boiling.
Pour the mixture into an earthen dish, cover, and let it sit overnight.
Simmer and season
In the morning, skim off the fat and return the mixture to the pot.
Add seasoning and 2 teaspoons of flour.
Let it simmer without boiling for a long time.
As the meat dries, pour in milk as needed.
A quarter of an hour before serving, remove the bones and skin.
Add walnut or mushroom catsup.
Thicken and serve
Thicken with flour, oatmeal, or cornmeal mixed with milk and hash liquor.
Boil for one more minute.
Adjust seasoning if necessary.
Serve with toasted bread.
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.
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,488 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,873 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Onion + walnuttop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,771 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- Provides the main body of the hash and its savoury meaty flavour as it simmers.
- Onion
- Adds sweetness and aroma that blend into the broth as it simmers.
- Flour
- Thickens the liquid so the hash becomes a cohesive, spoonable mixture.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and softness as the meat dries during long simmering.
The step that matters
Simmer without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes them stringy, while a gentle simmer keeps the mutton tender and the broth clear. Rapid boiling also reduces and clouds the liquid unevenly.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, milk, walnut, bread):
- Shallotfits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Asparagusfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, milk, walnut, 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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