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Mutton Elajadimiar

A mutton stew with onions, carrots, turnip, cumin, pepper, garam masala, butter, salt, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Elajadimiar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Mince the mutton.

  2. Fry the minced mutton in 3 tablespoons of butter until browned.

  3. Add water, cover, and boil for 1 hour.

Season the stew

  1. Mix the spices, salt, and flour with a little water.

  2. Add the spice mixture to the meat once it has boiled.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrot, turnip, and onion into small cubes.

  2. Boil the cubed vegetables in water.

  3. Heat the remaining butter in another pan.

  4. Brown the boiled vegetables in the heated butter.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the browned vegetables with the boiled meat and its soup.

  2. Boil for a few more minutes.

  3. Serve with the soup as desired.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + cumintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long simmer in water.
Butter
Fat that browns the minced meat and the vegetables, adding richness and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce around the meat and vegetables.
Cumin
Adds warm, earthy aroma that defines the flavor of the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the spice mixture after boiling. Spices and flour mixed with water must be added once the meat has boiled, so the flour disperses smoothly instead of clumping, and the liquid thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, cumin, pepper, butter, flour. 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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