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Mutton Stew

A hearty stew of mutton, onions, turnips, and potatoes simmered in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and turnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the mutton

  1. Fry the mutton bits in 1 ounce of butter for 15 minutes.

  2. Dredge the mutton with flour and let it brown.

Make the stew

  1. Add boiling water, salt, pepper, and summer savory.

  2. Add the halved onions and cover.

  3. Simmer for 45 minutes.

  4. Fry the turnip pieces in 1 ounce of butter until brown.

  5. Drop the fried turnips into the stew and cover.

  6. Boil for 1 hour.

  7. Add the potatoes and cook until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the onions.

  2. Check seasoning.

  3. Serve in a hot platter.

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. Summer savory + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Summer savory + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 and savory flavor as it browns and slowly tenderizes in the liquid.
Flour
Dredged onto the mutton, it browns and thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich stew.
Butter
Fat used for frying the mutton and turnips, adding richness and browning.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the stew as they cook, then are removed.
Turnips
Hold their shape through long simmering while adding mild sweetness and body.
Potatoes
Soften during final cooking and thicken the stew as their starch releases.

The step that matters

Dredge the mutton with flour and let it brown. Flour browning on the meat's surface creates flavorful Maillard compounds and helps thicken the liquid. If the meat is crowded or the pan is too cool, it steams instead of browning, leaving a pale, bland stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, flour, pepper, summer savory, clove, turnip):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, pepper, summer savory, clove, turnip. 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.

More mutton stew recipes

with Rice 14Irish 9with Carrots 5with Dumplings 4with Lettuce and Peas 4with Turnips 3 See all 234 →

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