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Stewed Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with carrots, flour gravy, parsley, salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Place the mutton in boiling water and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Reduce heat and cook the meat slowly until tender, about 15 minutes per pound.

  3. Add the diced carrot to the pot to enhance flavor.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, mix 2 tablespoons of flour with a little cold water until smooth.

  2. Slowly pour the flour mixture into the boiling meat stock, stirring constantly.

  3. Boil the gravy until thickened and fully cooked.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the chopped parsley just 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Slow cooking in water turns the tough connective tissue tender and succulent.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as its starch swells when boiled.

The step that matters

Pouring the flour mixture into the stock. Flour added without being smoothed in cold water, or poured in too fast without constant stirring, clumps into lumps. Stirring while pouring disperses the starch so it can thicken evenly, and the gravy must boil long enough for the starch to fully swell and lose its raw floury taste.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Turnipfits less well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, meat, flour, pepper, parsley. 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.

More stewed mutton recipes

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