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Stewed Mutton —

A stew of mutton chops, onions, potatoes, pepper, salt, and water cooked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Stewed Mutton —

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim excess fat from the mutton chops and place them in a stewpan.

  2. Slice the onions thinly and sprinkle them over the mutton with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Cut the potatoes in half and place them on top of the onions.

Stew

  1. Add enough water to prevent burning and create gravy.

  2. Stew gently for about three hours before adding the potatoes, then continue stewing for another 45 minutes.

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

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

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops
Slow stewing breaks down the connective tissue, making the meat tender and flavouring the gravy.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they cook, adding depth to the gravy.
Potatoes
Their starch thickens the gravy and they absorb the flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Stew gently for about three hours. Low, slow heat lets the tough connective tissue in the mutton break down into tender meat. Boiling hard would toughen the meat and could dry out or scorch the stew before it is tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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