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Mutton Ragout

A savory stew of mutton cooked with butter, flour, stock, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mutton Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt and brown the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth and brown.

  3. Pour in the stock and cook until it thickens.

Cook the ragout

  1. Add the chopped mutton and transfer to a double boiler.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Before serving, stir in the Worcestershire sauce and ketchup; season with salt and pepper as needed.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold mutton
Provides the meat that becomes the body of the ragout.
Butter
Fat that browns with the flour, adding nutty flavour to the base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce once cooked through.
Stock
Liquid that forms the sauce and carries flavour into the meat.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to season the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Flour that is cooked long enough in fat loses its raw taste and develops a toasted, savoury flavour, while stirring keeps it smooth without lumps when the stock goes in.

“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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