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Hasty Mutton

A quick mutton stew with vegetables and bread, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hasty Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Put ½ pint of water into a stew-pan.

  2. Cut the leg of mutton into slices and cover the bottom of the stew-pan with it.

  3. Add sliced onion, chopped celery, carrot, turnip, and slices of bread over the roots.

  4. Layer more mutton on top and sprinkle with salt.

  5. Repeat layering until all ingredients are used.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover tightly and cook over low heat for 15 minutes.

  2. Fill the stew-pan with hot water and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Skim off any fat 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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
Provides the meat and rich fat that flavour the stew as it cooks.
Bread crust
Soaks up cooking liquid and fat, thickening the stew and giving it body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the stew.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and soft texture to the stew.
Turnip
Adds a mild sweetness and soft texture as it cooks through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, celery, carrot, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, celery, carrot, turnip. 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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