Name: Tinned Mutton Stew
Ingredients: 4 pounds turnips, quartered; 10 pounds carrots, chopped; 20 pounds potatoes, chopped; 6 pounds onions, sliced; 6 pounds tomatoes, chopped; pepper to taste; 50 pounds canned mutton

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 ↓

Tinned Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

In a large pot, combine the turnips, carrots, potatoes, and onions.
Add enough water to cover the vegetables and bring to a boil.
Boil for 20 minutes, then add the tomatoes and season with pepper.
Stir in the canned mutton and let it simmer for another 20 minutes.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

Potatoes: Starch that softens during simmering, thickening the stew and giving body to the broth.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and moisture, rounding out the flavour of the broth.
Canned mutton: Provides the meat and rich savoury flavour that defines the stew.

Swap the tomato

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

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Spinachfits better
Tomatothe original

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