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Mutton-hash, with Rice

A savory dish of mutton hash served atop cooked rice with tomato sauce, curry powder, butter, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton-hash, with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice and let it drain for 15 minutes.

  2. Prepare the mutton-hash according to previous instructions.

  3. Cook the rice in a pot until nearly dry.

  4. Move the cooked rice to the side of the stove.

Season and assemble

  1. Add tomato sauce and butter mixed with curry powder to the rice and stir.

  2. In a deep dish, layer half the rice.

  3. Create a hollow in the center of the rice layer.

  4. Fill the hollow with the mutton-hash.

  5. Cover the mutton-hash with the remaining rice.

  6. Smooth the surface and serve.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  3. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 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

Mutton
Provides the savoury meat that forms the filling at the centre of the dish.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish, absorbing sauce and holding its shape when layered.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and acidity that flavour the rice and keep it from drying out.
Curry powder
Adds aromatic spice flavour to the butter and rice mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the curry flavour through the rice.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice, tomato, sauce, butter. 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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