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Mutton or Lamb Rechauffe

A simple stew of cold mutton or lamb simmered with butter, flour, water, beef stock, and mushroom or walnut catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb Rechauffe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in the flour constantly until combined.

  3. Add the water and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the fluid beef and mushroom or walnut catsup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cold mutton or lamb and let it simmer for about five minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + muttontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the flavor and gives the sauce richness as it melts.
Cold mutton or lamb
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Fluid beef
Adds savory, meaty depth to the sauce.
Mushroom or walnut catsup
Adds concentrated savory and slightly tangy flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour constantly until combined. Flour clumps if it hits the hot butter all at once or is left unstirred. Constant stirring coats each grain in fat so the later liquid thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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