Skip to main content
Main

Hashed Mutton

A stew of mutton, vegetables, and gravy served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Season the cold mutton pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the bones and trimmings in a saucepan, cover with water, and add sliced onions. Stew until a good gravy is formed.

  3. Skim the gravy, strain it into a stew-pan, and add the mutton.

Make the hash

  1. Add the boiled carrots, turnips, potatoes, and onions to the meat and gravy.

  2. Simmer gently until the meat is warmed through, avoiding boiling.

Serve

  1. Cover a dish with slices of buttered toast, then layer the meat and vegetables on top, pouring the gravy over them.

  2. For variation, add tomatoes or serve green peas or Lima beans separately.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which is already cooked and gently rewarmed in the gravy.
Bones and trimmings
Stewing them with water and onions extracts flavour and body into the gravy.
Potatoes
Starchy pieces that soften and thicken the hash, adding bulk and a mild texture.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the hash as they soften in the gravy.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery flavour and soft texture to the hash.
Buttered toast
Forms a base that soaks up the gravy and gives the dish a crisp-to-soft contrast.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the meat proteins and can break up the vegetables, so gentle heat keeps the meat tender and the hash intact.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, onion, carrot, turnip, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, onion, carrot, turnip, potato. 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.

More mutton hash recipes

Cold 4with Mushrooms 4 See all 80 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes