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Fillet of Mutton Stewed

A stew of mutton fillet cooked slowly with flour, butter, gravy, sweet herbs, onions, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fillet of Mutton Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut and prepare the fillet of mutton.

Brown the mutton

  1. Flour the fillet and brown it in butter.

Stew

  1. Place the browned fillet in a stewpan with gravy.

  2. Add sweet herbs, onions, and black pepper.

  3. Stew slowly for 3½ hours.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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).

Flour and butter 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 fillet
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the fillet so it browns well and helps thicken the gravy.
Butter
Fat that browns the floured fillet, adding color and savory flavor.
Gravy
Liquid that moistens the meat and forms the body of the stew.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for 3½ hours. Gentle, low heat over a long time breaks down the connective tissue in the mutton, making it tender. Rapid boiling toughens meat and can make the gravy cloudy or stringy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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