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Mutton in Tomato Sauce

A mutton dish simmered in a tomato sauce with bay leaf, parsley, garlic, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes with bay leaf, parsley, and garlic until tender.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the fire.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Mix butter with flour, then add a little hot juice and stir until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into the sauce.

  3. Stir until it thickens slightly.

  4. Add salt, pepper, and sugar to taste.

Serve with mutton

  1. Pour the hot sauce over the sliced mutton.

  2. Let it heat through on low heat.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main sauce body, along with acidity and fresh tomato flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour disperse smoothly without lumps.
Sugar
Softens the tomatoes' sharp acidity with a little sweetness.
Mutton
Forms the main meat, kept moist by gently heating it in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture to the hot juice. Flour clumps when it meets hot liquid directly. Blending it with butter and a little hot liquid first coats the starch so it disperses. Stirring until smooth prevents lumps in the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, parsley, garlic, butter, flour, pepper, sugar):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  3. Oreganobetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, parsley, garlic, butter, flour, pepper, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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