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Ragout of Cold Mutton

A stew of cold roasted or boiled mutton with carrots, turnips, onions, and a flour‑thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ragout of Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ragout

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat and sprinkle in 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Add the sliced onion and stir until browned.

  3. Add the mutton and brown it.

  4. Pour in 1 cup of water, then add the carrots and turnips.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, cover, and stew for 30 to 45 minutes until the vegetables are tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the remaining flour with ¼ cup of water and stir it into the stew.

  2. Let it boil for a moment before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing in the liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during cooking.
Turnips
Add mild earthy flavor and soft texture as they cook in the stew.
Onion
Browning in butter builds savory, sweet flavor at the start of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew liquid into a smooth, lightly body-rich sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onion and mutton and adds richness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and water mixture. Flour mixed with water before stirring in prevents lumps. Boiling for a moment after adding it lets the starch swell fully and thicken the sauce, so it should not be skipped.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, 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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