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Stewed Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with onion, salt, pepper, and tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Wipe the mutton with a damp cloth and remove the pink skin, bone splinters, and excess fat.

  2. Place the mutton in a granite stew pan and cover with boiling water.

Stew

  1. Cook slowly until the meat is tender, about 1 hour, adding the onion after the first hour.

  2. Add salt and pepper, replenishing boiling water as needed.

  3. When the bones slip out easily, remove from heat and let cool.

Skim and finish

  1. Once the fat hardens, remove it completely.

  2. Return the meat to heat, adding water if the broth is too strong, and adjust seasoning if desired.

  3. When boiling, add tapioca and cook for 10 minutes longer 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

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 rich-flavoured during slow stewing.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as it cooks.
Tapioca
Thickens the hot broth as its starch swells and gelatinizes during final cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca. Tapioca must boil in the broth to fully swell and thicken it. Adding it too early or cooking it too briefly can leave the broth thin or the starch grainy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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