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Mutton Stew

A slow-cooked stew of mutton with onion, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small pieces.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt and place in an earthen dish.

  3. Add the sliced onion, carrot, and turnip.

  4. Mix the butter and flour with warm water to create a paste, then pour over the meat.

  5. Cover with boiling water and add salt to taste.

Cook

  1. Cook for five hours in a covered pot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. 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 main protein and rich meaty flavour as it slowly breaks down.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, body-giving sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the stew.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the liquid.

The step that matters

Cover with boiling water and add salt to taste. Starting with boiling water helps the meat sear its surface and begin cooking evenly, while adding salt at this point lets you adjust seasoning before the long simmer concentrates the flavours.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, carrot, turnip, 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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