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Stewed Mutton a LA Marseillaise

A stew of mutton cooked with tomatoes, garlic, onions, mushrooms, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Stewed Mutton a LA Marseillaise

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the mutton

  1. In a saucepan, combine mutton with enough water to nearly cover it.

  2. Add sliced onions, butter, and seasonings including green ginger and crushed coriander seeds.

  3. Boil until the meat is tender, then strain the gravy into a separate vessel.

Finish and serve

  1. In another saucepan, warm the meat with butter and add cloves and spices.

  2. Cook the stewed tomatoes, garlic, onions, and mushrooms together for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve the mutton topped with the tomato mixture and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, whose connective tissue softens into tender texture during long simmering.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, forming a tangy sauce that balances the rich meat.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften and release their sugars.
Mushrooms
Contribute moisture and earthy savory flavor to the tomato topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and giving the meat a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil the mutton until fully tender. Mutton's connective tissue needs long, gentle simmering to break down into gelatin. Boiling too hard or stopping too early leaves the meat tough and stringy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tomato, garlic, onion, mushroom, butter, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tomato, garlic, onion, mushroom, butter, parsley. 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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