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Mutton Fricassee

A stew of mutton pieces browned in butter with cloves, nutmeg, onions, salt, bay leaf, and simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mutton Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, melt butter over medium heat.

  2. Add mutton pieces and spice with cloves, nutmeg, onions, coarse sea salt, and bay leaf.

  3. Fry until browned.

Simmer

  1. Pour boiling water over the meat.

  2. Cover and simmer for about 1 hour.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender with long, moist simmering.
Butter
Carries heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the meat.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour as they soften in the fat.

The step that matters

Fry until browned. Browning the meat before adding water builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Meat that is pale or steamed at this stage tastes flatter, and the later simmer cannot fully make up for it.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, clove, nutmeg. 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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