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Steweu Mutton

A stew made from a boneless mutton neck stuffed with breadcrumbs, parsley, eschalot, egg, pepper, and salt, simmered with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Steweu Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mutton

  1. Remove the bones from the neck of mutton and trim excess fat.

  2. Stuff the mutton with bread crumbs, parsley, eschalot, egg, pepper, and salt, then roll it tightly.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

Stew and strain

  1. Transfer the mutton to a pot with 2 quarts of water, carrot, onion, turnip, and celery, all lightly browned.

  2. Stew for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the meat.

  4. Strain the liquid through a sieve.

  5. Pulp the vegetables.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the vegetable pulp to taste, adding a little of the strained liquid.

  2. Serve the meat with the gravy poured over it.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and help the stuffing hold together inside the rolled meat.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds its shape while cooking.
Mutton
Provides the rich meat that is braised until tender in the stew.
Onion
Adds sweetness and depth to the stewing liquid as it browns and softens.
Carrot
Sweetens the stock and, once pulped, thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the mutton before stewing. Browning in the oven builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction, which the stewing liquid alone cannot produce. Skipping it leaves the gravy pale and flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, bread, parsley, egg, pepper, carrot, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, bread, parsley, egg, pepper, carrot, turnip. 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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