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Mince Mutton

A spiced minced mutton and rice dish cooked with ghee, onion, and aromatic spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cardamom and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mince Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Cook the rice until tender and set aside.

Cook the mutton

  1. Heat the ghee in a pan and sauté the chopped onion until golden.

  2. Add the minced mutton and cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the spices: cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, saffron, coriander, black pepper, cumin, and salt.

Combine

  1. Combine the cooked rice with the mutton mixture and mix well.

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. Cardamom + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Cinnamon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

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

  4. Cardamom + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  5. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced mutton
Provides the main protein and savoury meaty base of the dish.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the flavours of the mutton and spices.
Ghee
Adds fat for frying the onion and carries the spice aromas through the dish.
Onion
Browns in the fat to add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.

The step that matters

Browning the mutton. Cooking the mutton until well browned develops deep savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat tastes flat and greyish, so give it space and heat.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, rice, ghee, cinnamon, cardamom, saffron, coriander):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice, ghee, cinnamon, cardamom, saffron, coriander. 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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