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Stewed Muttonsphops

A slow‑cooked stew of mutton with carrots, turnips, onions, potatoes, herbs, tomatoes, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Stewed Muttonsphops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into chops and trim away the fat and bones.

  2. Beat and flatten the chops.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stew

  1. Place in a stew pan with enough water to cover them.

  2. Add sliced carrots, turnips, onions, potatoes, and sweet herbs or tomatoes.

  3. Cover and let stew slowly for about three hours, until everything is tender.

  4. Keep the pan covered except when skimming.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted bread pieces around 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Loin or neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Sliced potatoes
Starch that softens into the broth and thickens it slightly as it cooks.
Sliced carrots
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stew as they soften.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and savoury depth that balances the rich meat and broth.

The step that matters

Cover and stew slowly. Low, slow heat with the pan covered lets tough connective tissue in the mutton break down into tender meat while the liquid stays from evaporating too quickly. Rushing with high heat toughens the meat.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, carrot, onion, potato, tomato, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, carrot, onion, potato, tomato, bread. 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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