Name: Ragout of Cold Mutton
Ingredients: ¾ pound cold roasted or boiled mutton; 1 pound carrots; 1 pound turnips; 1 sliced onion; 2 ounces butter; 1¼ cups water; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 teaspoons salt; ½ teaspoon pepper

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 ↓

Ragout of Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the mutton into small pieces, trimming off most of the fat.

Make the stew

In a stewpan, melt the butter and sift in 1 tablespoon of flour; add the sliced onion and stir until browned.
Add the mutton and cook until browned.
Pour in 1¼ cups of water, then add the sliced carrots and turnips, cutting the turnips in half.
Season with salt and pepper, cover, and stew until the vegetables are tender, about 30 to 45 minutes.
Mix the remaining flour with a little water and add it to the stew; let it boil briefly 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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 savoury, browned flavour of the stew.
Butter: Browns the onion and carries flavour into the stew.
Flour: Thickens the stewing liquid as it cooks and boils.
Carrots: Add sweetness and firm texture that holds up during stewing.
Turnips: Add body and a mild, slightly sharp sweetness as they become tender.

The step that matters

Stew until the vegetables are tender. Stewing gently at a low simmer, covered, breaks down the fibres in the vegetables and meat so they become tender. Too little time leaves the vegetables firm and the meat tough.

Swap the onion

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

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

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

More mutton stew recipes

with Rice 14 Irish 9 with Carrots 5 with Dumplings 4 with Lettuce and Peas 4 with Turnips 3 See all 234 →

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Haricot Mutton59 recipes

Mutton Soup56 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Ragout of Cold Mutton