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Curried Mutton

A stew of mutton breast simmered with onions, butter, curry powder, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Curried Mutton

Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curried Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the mutton breast in a stewpan with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Season and simmer slowly for 1.5 hours.

Make the curry sauce

  1. In a separate pan, brown the sliced onion in butter.

  2. Add the curry powder and a little salt to the onions.

  3. Remove the meat from the broth and stir the curry mixture through the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the meat to the stewpan and stew for an additional hour.

  2. Dish the mutton and pour the gravy over it.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton breast
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Onion
Browned in butter to add sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Butter
Carries the onion browning and adds richness to the gravy.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavor that defines the dish and is stirred into the broth.

The step that matters

Stir the curry mixture through the broth. Curry powder needs to be cooked briefly in fat to bloom its aromatic compounds, so it should be stirred in with the browned onions and butter rather than added raw. Mixing it evenly into the broth prevents clumps and uneven spice.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter. 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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