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Cubiiieb Mutto]^

A stew of cold mutton cooked with onions, curry powder, flour, butter, and stock, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cubiiieb Mutto]^

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions into thin rings.

  2. Fry them in butter until light brown.

  3. Stir in curry powder, flour, and salt. Mix well.

Make the curry

  1. Cut the mutton into thin slices or mince if necessary, then add to the pan.

  2. When browned, add stock or gravy.

  3. Stew gently for about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a dish with a border of boiled rice.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavour of the curry.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's aroma and adds richness to the frying base.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid that turns the mixture into a stewed sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until light brown. Browning the onions slowly in butter develops sweetness and depth; if they are pale or burnt, the curry tastes flat or bitter. Stirring the curry powder and flour into the fat also cooks out their raw taste before liquid is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

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