Skip to main content
Main

Breast of Mutton Stewed with Carrots

A stew of mutton breast, carrots, potatoes, and spices simmered slowly and finished with a brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton Stewed with Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Salt the mutton on both sides and sprinkle with ground ginger.

  2. Place the mutton in a porcelain kettle with cold water and cover.

  3. Stew slowly for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Add the vegetables

  1. Pare and cut the carrots.

  2. Add the carrots to the kettle 1 hour before serving.

  3. Cut the potatoes into squares.

  4. Add the potatoes to the kettle 30 minutes before serving.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Take 1 tablespoon of fat from the kettle and heat it in a pan.

  2. Brown 1 tablespoon of flour in the fat.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon.

  4. Pour in the gravy from the stew and let it boil.

  5. Pour the gravy over the stew before serving.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton breast
Slow stewing turns the tough connective tissue tender and gives the broth rich meaty flavour.
Carrots
Add sweetness and firm texture that holds up during the long stew.
Potatoes
Thicken the stew slightly as their starch leaches out and give body to the dish.
Flour
Browned in fat, it thickens the gravy and adds a toasty, nutty flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds caramel sweetness and depth that balances the savoury meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in fat. Flour must cook in the hot fat until it turns golden and smells nutty; if it is added raw or not cooked long enough, the gravy tastes pasty and can form lumps when liquid is added.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, ginger, carrot, flour, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, ginger, carrot, flour, sugar, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes