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Cold Mutton

Cold Mutton is a dish of minced cold cooked mutton simmered with tomato sauce, lemon juice, and vinegar, served with eggs or puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mince

  1. Heat the minced cold mutton in a saucepan over gentle heat for 1–2 hours without boiling.

  2. Add a clove of garlic or shallot to the mince while heating, then remove before serving.

  3. Add tomato sauce, lemon juice, or tarragon vinegar to taste.

  4. Finely chop onions or shallots and parsley to mix into the mince if desired.

Serve

  1. For serving, place fried bread slices around the mince.

  2. Top the mince with poached or fried eggs if desired.

  3. Make an omelet, fill half with mince, fold, and cook under a salamander if needed.

  4. If making puff pastry, create vol-au-vent cases or small patties and fill with the mince.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Cold cooked mutton
Forms the body of the dish and carries the flavour of the sauce and seasonings.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture, sweetness and acidity to the mince.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, cooked meat.
Eggs
Set when cooked, giving structure to the omelet or topping for the mince.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dish and aids browning in cooking.

The step that matters

Heating the mince gently. Holding the mince just below boiling over a long, gentle heat keeps the meat tender and moist. Boiling toughens the proteins and dries the meat out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tomato, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, butter, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tomato, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, butter, egg. 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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