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Mutton Stew

A hearty stew of mutton or lamb, salt pork, onion, herbs, and corn, thickened with flour and milk, served over buttered toast.

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 Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove most of the fat from the mutton or lamb and cut it into pieces.

  2. Stew the meat in enough water to cover it for 1 hour.

Make the stew

  1. Add the salt pork and chopped onion, and cook until done.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, and thyme.

  3. Thicken the stew by stirring flour into the cold milk, then add it to the pot.

  4. For extra flavor, add sweet corn or fresh corn cut from the cob.

Serve

  1. Place slices of buttered toast in a serving platter and pour the stew over it.

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb
Slow stewing turns the tough meat tender and gives the broth its rich flavor.
Salt pork
Renders fat and adds savory, salty depth to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cold milk so it lends body to the stew.
Cold milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the thickened stew.
Sweet corn
Adds sweetness and a tender, juicy texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Thicken the stew by stirring flour into the cold milk. Flour added to cold liquid disperses evenly; stirring it into cold milk first prevents lumps, while hot liquid added directly would clump. Adding the mixture to the simmering pot then lets starch swell and thicken the stew.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, pepper, parsley, thyme, milk, flour. 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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