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Mutton, Ragout Of, French

A French-style mutton ragout simmered with butter, flour, water, parsley, sugar, pepper, salt, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton, Ragout Of, French

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Stir in the flour and continue stirring until nicely browned.

Simmer the mutton

  1. Add the mutton pieces and enough water to nearly cover them.

  2. Flavor with parsley, then add sugar, pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Once it boils, reduce heat and let it simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Fry the diced turnips until browned, then add them to the stewpan with the meat and simmer for 2 more minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the ragout on a dish, placing turnips in the center and meat around the edge.

  2. Pour the sauce over the dish and serve hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Browns with the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and browns.
Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during slow simmering.
Turnips
Add browned, slightly sweet flavor and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until nicely browned. Flour that browns too quickly or unevenly can scorch and taste bitter, while stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty flavor. Keep heat moderate and stir constantly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

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