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Mutton Stew

A hearty stew of mutton with onion, carrot, turnip, and flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the base

  1. In a soup kettle, heat the fat over low heat until melted.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until soft.

  3. Add the chopped carrot and turnip, and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the mutton pieces and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Simmer the stew

  1. Pour in the boiling water and bring to a boil, then skim off any foam.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water to make a paste, then add it to the stew.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer slowly for 3 hours.

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. Flour + turniptop 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 body of the stew and rich meaty flavour as it cooks slowly.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich stew when mixed into a paste.
Fat from the meat
Carries flavour and keeps the meat moist while the onion and vegetables soften.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the fat.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 3 hours. A gentle simmer breaks down the connective tissue in cheap mutton so it becomes tender, while a hard boil toughens the meat and makes the liquid cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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