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Cutlets a LA Irish Stew

A stew of mutton cutlets simmered with onions, herbs, veal broth, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cutlets a LA Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the undershot bone from the mutton and cut it into chops.

  2. Season the chops with pepper, coarse sea salt, mushroom powder, and beaten mace.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, add the chops, sliced onion, parsley, thyme, and veal broth.

  2. Simmer the chops until they are three-quarters cooked.

  3. Add the peeled whole potatoes and continue to stew until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Remove the parsley and thyme before serving in a deep dish.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, whose slow simmering turns it tender and gives the stew its rich flavour.
Potatoes
Absorb the cooking liquid as they cook, becoming soft and thickening the stew slightly.
Veal broth
Forms the cooking liquid that carries flavour into the meat and vegetables.
Onion
Softens during simmering and adds sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer the chops until three-quarters cooked. Stopping at the right point matters because the chops keep cooking while the potatoes finish. Overcooking the meat early leaves it dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, mushroom, onion, parsley, thyme, veal):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, mushroom, onion, parsley, thyme, veal. 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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