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Mutton Ragout

A slow‑cooked mutton ragout with leeks, turnips, and herbs.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into small pieces.

  2. In a pan, stir the mutton pieces with a little butter over medium heat for 30 minutes.

Make the ragout

  1. Remove the meat and add 1 tablespoon of flour to the remaining grease in the pan, cooking until light brown.

  2. Moisten the flour with broth and add salt, pepper, parsley, leeks, thyme, and garlic.

  3. Return the meat to the pan and let it cook for 2 hours.

  4. Fry the turnips in butter until brown, then add them to the ragout and cook together for 30 minutes.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulder or breast of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, slow cooking.
Flour
Browned in the pan grease, it thickens the broth into a rich sauce.
Broth
Forms the cooking liquid that moistens the flour and braises the meat.
Turnips
Browned in butter first, they add sweetness and caramelised flavour to the ragout.
Leeks
Soften during cooking, adding mild onion-like sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour in the meat fat until light brown toasts it and removes raw starch taste, and it must be stirred so it does not scorch before the broth is added.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, leek, thyme. 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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