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Ragout of Mutton with Farina Balls

A slow‑cooked mutton ragout served with farina balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ragout of Mutton with Farina Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ragout

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the flour, browning it.

  2. Add the diced carrot and onion, then remove the vegetables.

  3. Sear the mutton pieces in the same pan.

  4. Add hot water, bay leaf, parsley, and seasonings to the meat and vegetables.

  5. Cover and simmer for two hours.

  6. Add peas ten minutes before serving.

Make the farina balls

  1. Cook farina and milk in a double boiler for one hour.

  2. Add seasoning and the well-beaten yolk, stir well, and cool.

  3. Roll the mixture into balls once cold.

  4. Dip the balls in egg and breadcrumbs.

  5. Fry the balls in deep fat.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour
Browned in butter, it adds color and body to the ragout's sauce.
Farina
Thickens with milk into a firm mixture that holds its shape when rolled into balls.
Egg yolk
Binds the farina mixture so the balls hold together during frying.
Milk
Cooks with the farina to form a smooth, thick base for the balls.
Butter
Carries the browning of the flour and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cool the farina mixture fully before rolling. Farina thickens as it cools and sets firm. If the mixture is still warm, it stays soft and sticky, so the balls can break apart or lose shape in the frying fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, pepper, flour, parsley, carrot, clove):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, pepper, flour, parsley, carrot, clove. 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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