Why it works: Garlic and turnip work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 664 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Prepare the mutton and sauce
Fry the mutton pieces in butter until browned, then drain in a colander.
Add flour to the remaining butter, brown slightly, then moisten with broth.
Boil the mixture, skim off fat, and strain into a clean saucepan.
Braise the stew
Add the mutton, chopped carrots, onions (one studded with cloves), parsley, bay leaf, thyme, garlic, salt, and pepper.
Boil until the meat is cooked and the sauce is reduced.
Prepare the turnips and serve
Fry the turnips in butter until they begin to brown, then sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Once the turnips are golden, add them to the stew an hour before serving.
Remove the carrots, onions, and parsley before serving, then dress the meat and garnish with turnips.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Garlic + turniptop 7% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together664 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together8,053 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together9,057 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together29,030 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together8,001 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
- Breast of mutton
- Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich as it simmers in the sauce.
- Butter
- Browns the mutton and turnips and carries flavour through the dish.
- Flour
- Browned in butter, it thickens the broth into a smooth sauce.
- Broth
- Forms the liquid base that the sauce reduces from.
- Turnips
- Soften in the stew while browning and sugaring give them a golden, sweet edge.
The step that matters
Skim the sauce before straining. Fat that is not skimmed off after boiling would leave the sauce greasy and heavy, so it must be removed before the mixture goes into the clean saucepan.
Flavor stand-ins for the clove
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, flour, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme):
- Marjorambetter flavor fit
- Celerybetter flavor fit
- Pepperbetter flavor fit
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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