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Mutton, Hoast

A mutton stew with onions, carrots, turnips, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton, Hoast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small chops and trim off excess fat.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and sprinkle in a little flour.

  2. Add the sliced onions and stir until browned.

  3. Add the mutton and brown it thoroughly.

  4. Pour in the water and add the sliced carrots and turnips.

  5. Season with pepper and salt, and stew until tender, about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. If in season, substitute green peas for the carrots and turnips, piling them in the center of the dish with the chops arranged around.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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 (in the method)
Provides the meat, which becomes tender and rich as it stews slowly.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the onions and mutton and carries flavor through the stew.
Flour
Browns in the melted butter and thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy.
Onions
Caramelize when browned, adding sweetness and savory depth to the stew.
Carrots
Soften during stewing, adding mild sweetness and body.
Turnips
Soften during stewing, adding a mildly sharp, earthy note.

The step that matters

Brown the mutton thoroughly. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to the water yields a flat, greyish stew, so the pieces need time and space to colour well.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, turnip, 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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