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To Hash Mutton

A fried mutton hash with gravy, walnut ketchup, and lemon pickle, served hot and garnished with red cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Hash Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry some onions in a little butter.

  2. Add the gravy and let it stew for about 10 minutes.

  3. Put in the mutton, walnut ketchup, browning, and lemon pickle.

  4. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot without thickening the gravy.

  2. Garnish with red cabbage.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Roasted mutton
Provides the main body of the hash, tender pieces that warm through in the gravy.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour that coats the meat and onions.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a dark, salty, savoury depth to the gravy.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 to 4 minutes. Boiling only briefly keeps the mutton tender and moist. Longer boiling toughens meat and can reduce the gravy too much, so timing matters.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, walnut, ketchup, lemon, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, walnut, ketchup, lemon, pepper. 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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