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To Hash Mutton

Hashed mutton is thin slices of roasted mutton stewed in gravy with butter, walnut ketchup, browning and lemon pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Hash Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hash

  1. Fry onions in butter until soft.

  2. Add gravy and stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the mutton, walnut ketchup, browning, and lemon pickle.

  4. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with red cabbage.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Thin slices of roasted mutton
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its meaty texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour while the onions soften.
Good gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury depth that coats the meat.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a dark, savoury, umami-rich flavour to the sauce.
Browning
Darkens the sauce so the hash looks richly coloured.
Lemon pickle
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 to 4 minutes. A short boil heats the mutton through and lightly thickens the gravy. Boiling longer toughens the meat and reduces the sauce too far, so the hash turns dry and chewy.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, walnut, ketchup, lemon, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, walnut, ketchup, lemon, 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.

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