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Hashed Mutton with Mushrooms

A hash of sliced mutton cooked with mushrooms, flour, butter, and seasonings, served with toast or fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle flour on both sides of the mutton slices.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the mushrooms.

  3. Add a little gravy, pepper, and coarse sea salt to the mushrooms.

  4. Stir and stew until done.

Make the hash

  1. Add the mutton to the stewpan and heat slowly, stirring to prevent burning.

  2. Do not let it boil, or the meat will become tough.

  3. Once the hash thickens and the flour changes color, it is done.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with thin toast or fried bread around the 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.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Mutton
Provides the meat that forms the body of the hash, becoming tender when heated gently.
Flour
Coats the mutton and thickens the gravy as the hash heats, giving it body.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savory, earthy flavor as they stew in the butter and gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mushrooms cook and carry flavor.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and savory depth that the flour thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Keeping the hash from boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can scorch the flour-thickened sauce, so the hash should be heated slowly and stirred.

“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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