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Mutton Stew

A stew made with mutton pieces, water, salt, pepper, and vegetables such as carrots and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into pieces.

  2. Place the mutton in a pot and cover with water.

  3. Add seasoning and chopped vegetables.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer until the meat is tender, about 1.5 to 2 hours.

  2. Serve 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. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavourful during long, gentle simmering.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Potatoes
Soften and thicken the stew slightly as their starch releases into the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Neck meat is tough, rich in connective tissue. It needs a long, gentle simmer below a rolling boil so the collagen slowly breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard toughens the meat and clouds the broth.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, carrot. 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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