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Gravy, to Make Mutton Like Venison

A gravy made by stewing mutton with beef or mutton gravy and high snipe or woodcock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Gravy, to Make Mutton Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the mutton until it stays sweet, depending on the weather.

  2. Cut the high snipe or woodcock into small pieces, removing the entrails bag.

Make the gravy and cook

  1. Stew the pieces gently in 1½ pints of unseasoned beef or mutton gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy and pour it boiling hot over the mutton.

  3. Cook for half an 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. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat flavour and texture.
Beef or mutton gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour, keeping the meat tender during stewing.
High snipe or woodcock
Adds the game flavour that distinguishes this dish from a plain mutton gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing the pieces gently. Gentle heat keeps the meat tender and prevents the proteins from tightening and toughening. Boiling hard would make the meat dry and stringy and cloud the gravy.

“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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