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Mutton Stew

A hearty stew of mutton, onions, potatoes, and water, seasoned with flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat from the mutton and cut it into serving pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, heat a little of the fat and add sliced onions. Stir over high heat for 8 to 10 minutes.

  2. Add the mutton pieces, sprinkle with flour, salt, and pepper. Stir for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour in boiling water and boil for about 3 hours.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 flavor that form the body of the stew.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the cooking liquid as it browns and simmers.
Potatoes
Soak up the cooking liquid and add starch that thickens the stew.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the meat. Stirring the flour over heat lets it coat the meat and cook off its raw taste before the water is added. Without this, the flour can clump and leave the stew with a pasty, floury flavor.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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