Skip to main content
Main

Loin of Mutton Stewed

A stew made from a mutton loin simmered with water, butter, sweet herbs, onions, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Loin of Mutton Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Remove the skin and bone the loin of mutton.

  2. Roll the meat and place it in a stewpan with water, butter, sweet herbs, and onions.

  3. Stew for nearly four hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Add red wine.

  3. Serve very hot with jelly sauce.

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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  4. Onion + red winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 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
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender and rich as it stews slowly.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the gravy a richer, smoother mouthfeel.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury aroma into the stewing liquid as they cook.
Sweet herbs
Infuse the stewing liquid with aromatic flavour as the meat cooks.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing the rolled mutton. Connective tissue in mutton breaks down into gelatin over long, gentle simmering. Boiling hard instead of simmering gently can toughen the meat and leave it stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, red wine):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, red wine. 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.

More mutton stew recipes

with Rice 14Irish 9with Carrots 5with Dumplings 4with Lettuce and Peas 4with Turnips 3 See all 234 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes