Name: Mutton and Tomato Stew
Ingredients: 2-3 pounds mutton or lamb cutlets; 1 onion, sliced; 2-3 raw tomatoes, peeled, sliced, and chopped; boiling water or ½ cup hot tomato juice; browned flour or butter rolled in flour for thickening

Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton and Tomato Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

2-3 pounds mutton or lamb cutlets
1 onion, sliced
2-3 raw tomatoes, peeled, sliced, and chopped
boiling water or ½ cup hot tomato juice
browned flour or butter rolled in flour for thickening

Directions

Brown the meat

Sear and brown the meat on one side in a stew pan.
Turn the meat and brown the other side.

Simmer

Add the chopped tomatoes and any juices from the meat.
Simmer slowly for one hour or until the meat is almost tender.
Pour in boiling water or hot tomato juice.
Turn the meat once or twice.
Cook for an additional 20-30 minutes.

Thicken and serve

Transfer the meat to a platter.
Thicken the gravy.
Boil briefly.
Pour over the meat.

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.

Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together32,460 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,531 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mutton + tomatotop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together452 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,065 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and body, and their juices help form the sauce.
Onion: Adds savory sweetness and aroma as the base of the gravy.
Browned flour: Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the meat is almost tender. Tough cuts like mutton need long, gentle simmering so their connective tissue breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibers and can leave the meat dry and chewy.

Swap the tomato

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

Leekfits better
Turnipfits better
Chivefits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, flour. 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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Tomato Bisque61 recipes

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Mutton and Tomato Stew