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Minced Mutton

A dish of chopped cold mutton simmered with salt, pepper, flour, water, and butter, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minced Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all the fat from the cold mutton and chop it on a board.

  2. Dredge the chopped mutton with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and flour.

  3. Place the chopped mutton into a saucepan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add 1 cup of boiling water and 1 tablespoon of butter to the saucepan.

  2. Let it boil gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Serve the minced mutton on toast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 becomes tender and savory as it simmers in liquid.
Flour
Coats the chopped meat and helps thicken the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Let it boil gently for 15 minutes. A gentle boil keeps the mutton tender and prevents the flour-thickened liquid from scorching or turning lumpy. A hard, fast boil can toughen the meat and break up the minced texture.

“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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