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Mutton Neck

A mutton neck stew cooked with curd, spices, eggs, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cumin and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,382 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Mutton Neck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices and meat

  1. Make pastes of cumin, pepper, and garam masala separately.

  2. Mix the mutton with curd, pepper paste, cumin paste, and salt.

Cook the curry

  1. Boil enough water and cook the meat covered until tender.

  2. Add the liquid from the eggs, bread crumbs, salt, and all pasted spices to the boiled meat and stir well.

  3. Stir in hot butter and boil for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Reserve a little soup for serving.

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. Cumin + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,382 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 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
Provides the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it simmers.
Curd
Its acidity helps soften the meat and adds a mild tang.
Eggs
Their liquid helps bind the mixture and give it a smoother body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the soup slightly.
Butter
Adds fat, richness, and a smooth mouthfeel to the gravy.
Cumin
Contributes warm, earthy aroma that defines the spice base.

The step that matters

Stir in the hot butter. Fat added to a hot liquid can separate if not stirred in well. Stirring keeps the butter dispersed through the soup, so the gravy stays smooth and evenly rich rather than greasy on top.

Swap the cumin

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Cuminthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, bread, egg, 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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