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English Mutton Stew

A stew of cold roasted or boiled mutton simmered with pepper, salt, butter, flour, currant jelly, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

English Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Slice the cold mutton into thin small pieces.

  2. Barely cover the mutton with cold water.

  3. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, and a small bit of butter.

  4. Let it simmer for a few minutes.

Finish the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and brown it with browned flour.

  2. Add ½ cup of currant jelly and ½ cup of port wine.

  3. Simmer a little longer and serve.

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. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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 tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running thin.
Browned flour
Adds a toasted colour and deeper, nutty flavour to the gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy while balancing its savoury taste.
Port wine
Adds depth and a fruity richness to the gravy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, butter, flour, port wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, butter, flour, port wine. 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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