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Hashed Mutton

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 mutton pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the bones and trimmings in a saucepan, cover with water, and add sliced onions.

  3. Stew until a good gravy forms.

  4. Skim the gravy.

  5. Strain it into a stew pan.

Combine and simmer

  1. Add the mutton.

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

  3. Simmer on low heat until the meat is warmed through, avoiding boiling.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a dish with slices of buttered toast.

  2. Layer the meat and vegetables on top.

  3. Pour the gravy over the dish.

  4. Optionally add tomatoes or serve with boiled green peas or Lima beans.

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 flavour, and its connective tissue softens into the gravy during stewing.
Bones and trimmings
Release collagen and flavour into the water, building a rich, body-giving gravy.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, thickening the dish slightly and making it filling.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and colour to the stew.
Buttered toast
Forms a soft base that soaks up the gravy and holds the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Simmer on low heat. Boiling toughens the meat proteins and makes them dry and stringy, while gentle simmering keeps the mutton tender and moist as it warms through.

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.

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