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Economical Stew

A stew of mutton, onions, potatoes, and barley flour, cooked slowly in a bag.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Economical Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a cooking bag well.

  2. Wash the mutton pieces thoroughly.

  3. Dust the mutton with salted barley flour and a little pepper.

  4. Wash the onions and potatoes well.

  5. Layer the wet onions and potatoes in the bag with the mutton.

  6. Add about ½ pint of water to the bag.

Cook

  1. Place the bag on the grid and cook slowly for 2 hours at 275°F (135°C).

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish and stir well 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Barley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Barley + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 that turns tender and flavourful during long, slow cooking.
Salted barley flour
Coats the meat and thickens the cooking juices into a light gravy.
Onions
Soften and release sweetness and aroma into the stew liquid.
Potatoes
Add starchy body and soak up the cooking juices.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly at low heat. Mutton is a tough cut with connective tissue. Gentle, low heat over a long time converts collagen to gelatin, keeping the meat tender and moist. High heat toughens and dries the fibres.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, barley, flour, pepper, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley, flour, pepper, potato. 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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