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Mutton Stew, with Dumplings

A hearty stew of lean mutton and salt pork, thickened with milk and flour, served with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mutton Stew, with Dumplings

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the mutton in a pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Cook slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Add the pork, onion, pepper, and herbs.

  4. Stew for an additional hour.

Make the dumplings and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the milk to create a paste.

  2. Cut the paste into strips and drop them into the stew.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the meat and dumplings with a skimmer and place on a dish.

  5. Add the remaining milk and flour to the gravy, stir until thickened, and pour over the dish.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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
Long slow cooking turns the tough lean meat tender and flavours the broth.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the stew, adding richness and savoury depth to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a paste for dumplings and later thickens the gravy.
Milk
Moistens the flour into a dough for dumplings and adds richness to the gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savour as it softens in the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and milk gravy until thickened. Flour needs to cook in liquid to swell its starch and thicken the gravy. Adding it raw or leaving it under-stirred can leave a floury taste or lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pork, parsley, thyme, milk, flour, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, parsley, thyme, milk, 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.

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