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Minced Mutton

A dish of minced sheep heart and livers cooked with onion, butter, flour, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Minced Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wash the sheep's heart and livers thoroughly.

  2. Boil them in salted water for 30 minutes.

  3. Mince the boiled heart and livers finely.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and brown the flour.

  2. Add some of the boiling liquid to the pan.

  3. Stir in the minced meat and chopped onion.

  4. Cover and let simmer for a few minutes.

  5. Add pepper and Worcestershire sauce, then 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Sheep's heart
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender through boiling and mincing.
Sheep's lights
Adds soft, mild offal texture that blends into the minced mixture.
Butter
Carries the flour browning and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Browned in the butter, it thickens the liquid and gives the sauce body.
Onion
Softens during simmering and adds gentle sweetness and aroma.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred constantly over moderate heat. Scorching gives a bitter taste, while properly browned flour thickens the liquid smoothly once the boiling stock is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sauce. 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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