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Stewed Mutton and Turnips

A stew of mutton and turnips simmered with onion, pepper, salt, ginger, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Mutton and Turnips

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into nice-sized pieces.

  2. Prepare the turnips and onion, cutting them into quarters.

Stew

  1. Place the mutton in a stewpan with the seasoning and hot water.

  2. Remove the scum as it rises.

  3. Add the vegetables to the stewpan and let it simmer for about 3 hours.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  3. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together137 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
Long, gentle simmering breaks down its connective tissue, making the meat tender and flavorful.
Turnips
Softens during long simmering and adds body and mild sweetness to the stew.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Remove the scum as it rises. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise during simmering. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and prevents off, bitter flavors from spreading through the stew.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, onion, 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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