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Mutton Stew

A hearty stew of mutton, potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, and green peas, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 the meat

  1. Wash the mutton in water mixed with vinegar and salt, then cut it into suitable pieces.

  2. Place the meat in a large pot with 10 gallons of water and boil for 1 hour.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Add the quartered potatoes, quartered onions, sliced turnips, and sliced carrots to the pot.

  2. Cook everything together for 40 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the stew with flour, season with pepper and salt, and add the drained green peas.

  2. Simmer the stew for 20 minutes and serve.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat and rich flavour as it simmers in the broth.
Potatoes
Soften during long cooking and thicken the broth slightly as their starch releases.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich stew sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour while becoming tender in the stew.
Turnips
Add a mild peppery sweetness and firm texture that holds up to simmering.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour must be stirred in evenly, ideally mixed smoothly into some liquid first, so it hydrates and thickens without forming lumps. Added directly to a boiling pot, it clumps and leaves the stew unevenly thick.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, onion, turnip, carrot, 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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