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Leg of Mutton with Carrots

A slow-cooked stew of leg of mutton and carrots simmered in broth with butter, flour, herbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton with Carrots

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the mutton

  1. Lard the leg of mutton and place it in a stew pan with butter.

  2. Heat over medium for 5-10 minutes, turning to brown all sides.

  3. Remove the mutton and mix flour into the butter in the pan.

  4. Add broth or boiling water and let simmer, stirring often.

Simmer and serve

  1. Return the mutton to the pan and add more broth or water as needed.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and herbs.

  3. Slowly boil for 2 hours.

  4. Add the browned carrots and boil for another hour 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Long slow simmering turns the tough meat tender and gives the stew its savoury body.
Butter
Carries the browning of the meat and forms the base that flour thickens.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich stew sauce when mixed into the butter.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks the meat and becomes the stew's savoury sauce.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and a softened texture as they finish cooking in the stew.

The step that matters

Brown the mutton on all sides. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, which only happens on dry, hot surfaces. Crowding or steaming the meat leaves the stew tasting flat and grey.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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