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Mutton Gravy for

A savory mutton gravy made with butter, spices, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mutton Gravy for

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Cut the mutton into pieces and brown them in butter.

  2. Pour boiling water over the browned mutton.

  3. Add cloves, cinnamon, mixed herbs, pepper, and salt.

  4. Simmer gently for an hour or more.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy to remove fat and thicken it.

  2. Stir in the port wine and serve in a tureen.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Scrag of mutton
Provides the meat and bones that flavour the broth as they simmer.
Butter
Browns the mutton, building savoury, roasted flavour at the start.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Strain the gravy to remove fat. Fat rises to the surface as the gravy simmers and cools. Removing it before serving keeps the gravy clean-tasting and less greasy.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, clove, pepper, port wine. 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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