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Economical Stew

A slow-cooked mutton stew with onions, potatoes, and barley flour dusting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Economical Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a cooking bag well.

  2. Wash the mutton pieces thoroughly.

  3. Dust the mutton thickly with salted barley flour and lightly with pepper.

Assemble and cook

  1. Put the sliced onions and potatoes into the bag in layers, starting with the wet vegetables.

  2. Add the mutton on top of the vegetables.

  3. Pour in about ½ cup of water.

  4. Seal the bag and place it on the grid.

  5. Cook slowly for 2 hours at 275°F (135°C).

Serve

  1. Serve hot and stir well before 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Barley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Barley + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the stew is built around.
Salted barley flour
Coats the mutton, helping to thicken the cooking juices and add body.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, softening during slow cooking to thicken the stew.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavour into the stew.

The step that matters

Seal the bag and cook slowly. A tightly sealed bag traps steam so the meat and vegetables cook in their own moisture. Slow, low heat keeps the mutton tender and prevents the juices from becoming dry or tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, barley, flour, pepper, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley, flour, pepper, potato. 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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