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Stewed Mutton or Lamb

A stew of mutton or lamb cutlets braised in butter, flour, stock, and tomato sauce, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Mutton or Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the skin, fat, and some bones from the cutlets or chops.

  2. Fry the cutlets in butter until browned on both sides.

  3. Remove the cutlets from the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add flour to the remaining butter in the pan.

  2. Stir until the flour is browned.

  3. Moisten with stock and tomato sauce.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the fried cutlets back to the pan.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Stir gently for 30 minutes, skimming occasionally.

  4. Serve the cutlets with the strained sauce over them.

  5. Optionally serve with cooked rice as a garnish.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + tomatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

Mutton or lamb cutlets
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing in the sauce.
Butter
Browns the meat surface and carries flavour into the flour roux for the sauce.
Flour
Browned in the fat, it thickens the stock and tomato sauce into a body-rich gravy.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and savoury depth to the stewing liquid, balancing the rich meat.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until browned. Flour cooked in fat must brown evenly; under-cooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, while over-browning gives a bitter note and weaker thickening. Watch colour closely before adding liquid.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, 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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