Skip to main content
Main

Mutton Stew

A slow‑cooked stew of mutton with onion, ginger, garlic, pepper, salt, and optional vegetables or tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the mutton into pieces and wash and dry the meat.

  2. Mix the onion juice, ginger, garlic, pepper, and salt with the meat.

  3. Let the mixture marinate for 1 to 4 hours.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat the ghee or lard in a large stewpan and fry the meat until browned.

  2. Pour in the marinade and simmer for 15–20 minutes.

  3. Thicken some stock with flour and add it to the stew.

  4. Simmer until the meat is tender.

Add vegetables and serve

  1. If using vegetables, remove the original gravy, add the soaked vegetables, and cover with hot stock.

  2. Simmer until tender.

  3. Return the original gravy to the pot and serve hot.

  4. If using tomatoes, reduce the amount of stock as they release liquid.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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 main protein, which becomes tender and flavourful with long, slow simmering.
Ghee or lard
Fat for frying the meat, promoting browning and adding rich flavour to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the stew gains body and a fuller gravy.
Onion juice
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the meat during marinating.

The step that matters

Browning the meat before adding the marinade. Frying the meat until browned develops deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pouring in the liquid too early would steam the meat instead, leaving the stew pale and flat-tasting.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, garlic, pepper, ghee, flour, meat):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, garlic, pepper, ghee, flour, meat. 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 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipes