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Stewed Veal or Mutton

A stew of veal or mutton cooked in a butter gravy flavored with pepper, nutmeg, and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Veal or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the broiled or roasted veal or mutton.

  2. Dredge the slices in flour and fry in butter until light brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the meat and add hot water to the butter in the pan.

  2. Mix flour with water and stir into the gravy.

  3. Season with pepper, nutmeg, and a little catsup.

Finish

  1. Return the meat to the pan and stew until very hot.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Veal or mutton
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender when stewed in the gravy.
Flour
Coats the slices for browning and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Fries the coated meat to a light brown and adds richness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew until very hot. Returning the meat to the gravy and heating it gently lets the flavours blend and the meat warm through without toughening.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, 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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