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Breast of Mutton and Green Peas

A stew of mutton breast pieces simmered with peas, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton and Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the breast of mutton into small pieces and dredge with flour.

  2. Fry in butter until nicely browned.

Stew and finish

  1. Cover with water, add pepper and salt, and stew over moderate heat until the meat is very tender.

  2. Remove the meat and skim off the fat from the gravy.

  3. Add the boiled peas to the strained gravy and let it boil gently until the peas are done.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the meat, helping it brown and thickening the gravy.
Butter
Carries the frying heat and adds richness and browning to the meat.
Tender young peas
Add sweetness, soft texture and fresh flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing the mutton over moderate heat. Collagen in mutton breaks down slowly into gelatin at gentle heat, making the meat tender. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the meat stringy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, butter, 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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