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Hashed Mutton with Mushrooms

A hash of mutton and mushrooms cooked with flour, butter, gravy, pepper, and salt, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle flour on both sides of the mutton slices.

Make the hash

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the mushrooms.

  2. Add gravy, pepper, and coarse sea salt to the mushrooms and stew until done.

  3. Add the mutton to the stewpan and heat through slowly, stirring to prevent burning.

  4. Do not let it boil, or the meat will become tough.

  5. Once the hash thickens and the flour changes color, it is done.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with thin toast or fried bread around the 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tough if the hash is boiled.
Flour
Coats the mutton and thickens the gravy as the hash cooks.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savory flavor as they stew in butter and gravy.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and savory flavor that binds the hash together.
Butter
Adds fat for cooking the mushrooms and carrying flavor.

The step that matters

Do not let the hash boil. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can scorch the thickened flour, so the hash should be heated slowly and stirred.

“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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