Skip to main content
Main

Minced Mutton

A stew of minced mutton cooked with onions, peas, butter, water, pepper, and salt, served over dry rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Mince the meat of the neck finely.

Make the mutton

  1. Add the minced meat to a pot with chopped onions, green peas, butter, water, pepper, and salt.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 hours, keeping it well covered.

Serve

  1. Boil rice until dry.

  2. Serve the minced mutton over the rice in a deep dish.

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. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat of the neck
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften into the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the simmer.
Green peas
Add color, mild sweetness, and soft texture to the dish.

The step that matters

Simmering slowly while keeping the pot well covered. Low, gentle heat breaks down connective tissue in the neck meat so it turns tender rather than tough. Keeping the lid on holds in moisture so the meat does not dry out over two hours.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, butter, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes