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Hashed Mutton

A stew of sliced mutton with herbs, celery, and a thickened onion gravy flavored with ketchup or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,422 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Cut the mutton into even slices, trimming off excess fat and gristle.

  2. Chop the bones and fragments of the joint and place them in a stewpan with the pepper, allspice, herbs, and celery.

  3. Cover with water and simmer for 1 hour.

Thicken and finish

  1. Fry the onion in butter until pale brown, then sprinkle in a little flour to thicken.

  2. Add the thickened onion mixture to the stewpan and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the gravy and let it cool, then skim off any fat.

  4. Return the gravy and meat to the stewpan, flavor with ketchup or tomato sauce, and warm through gently.

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. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Allspice + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour 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
Supplies the meat and bones that give the gravy its savory, meaty body.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic background flavor to the simmered gravy.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and helps it brown before the flour is added.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the meat instead of running thin.
Onion
Browned in butter, it adds sweetness and depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after straining and cooling. Fat rises and sets on top of cooled gravy, so removing it before reheating keeps the sauce from tasting greasy and oily.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, celery, onion, butter, flour, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, celery, onion, butter, flour, ketchup. 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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