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To Hash Mutton

A quick mutton hash with onions, butter, gravy, walnut ketchup, and lemon pickle, served hot and garnished with red cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onions until golden.

  2. Add the gravy and let it stew for about 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

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

  2. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, then serve hot without thickening the sauce.

  4. Garnish 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. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Roasted mutton
Provides the meat that forms the body of the hash.
Onions
Softened and browned in butter, they add sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the onions' flavour and helps them brown.
Good gravy
Forms the liquid base that the meat simmers in, adding moisture and savoury flavour.
Walnut ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, tangy flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 to 4 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally. Brief boiling reduces the sauce and combines the flavours without toughening the mutton. Longer heating can make cooked meat dry and stringy, so timing matters.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, butter, walnut, ketchup, pepper, cabbage. 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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