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Mutton-hash, with Onions

A savory mutton hash cooked with onions, butter, wine, and flour, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton-hash, with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion base

  1. In a flat stewpan, melt the butter and add the minced onions.

  2. Fry the onions gently, stirring, until they are nicely colored.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then sprinkle with flour.

Add the mutton

  1. Moisten with white wine and a little gravy, and let it boil.

  2. Add the slices of cooked mutton to the stewpan and warm them without boiling.

  3. Season again and add chopped parsley before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

White onions
Soften and brown to form the sweet, savoury base of the hash.
Butter
Fat that carries the onions' cooking and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy that coats the mutton.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth, loosening the pan as it boils.
Cooked mutton
Main protein, warmed through in the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Warming the mutton without boiling. Cooked meat turns tough and dry when it is held at a boil. Keeping the sauce just below boiling warms the slices gently and keeps them tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, flour, white wine, mutton, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, white wine, mutton, parsley. 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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