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Leg of Mutton Stew

A stew of leg of mutton simmered with broth, brandy, onions, carrot, herbs, garlic, and port, served with forcemeat balls, haricots verts, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Leg of Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of mutton and tie the meat into shape.

  2. Place the mutton in a stewing pan and add enough broth to half cover it.

  3. Add brandy, onions, carrot, herbs, peppercorns, parsley, garlic, and port to the pan.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Cover the pan and cook slowly, keeping it below boiling point until done.

  2. Strain the cooking sauce, thicken it with red currant jelly, anchovy vinegar, and port.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton garnished with fried turkey forcemeat balls and pour the gravy around it.

  2. Accompany with haricots verts and mashed potatoes.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the rich meat that becomes tender during long, slow, moist cooking.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy, balancing the savoury sauce.
Anchovy vinegar
Adds acidity and savoury depth that brightens the thickened gravy.
Port
Adds sweetness, colour and fruity depth to the sauce.
Broth
Provides moisture and savoury flavour as the mutton cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the pan below boiling point. Gentle heat lets the tough connective tissue in the mutton break down slowly into tender meat. A rolling boil toughens the muscle fibres and can dry out the sauce.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, brandy, onion, carrot, parsley, clove, garlic):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, brandy, onion, carrot, parsley, clove, garlic. 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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