Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Mutton — Continued
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the mutton
Wash the mutton well.
Sprinkle the mutton with flour.
Fry the mutton in a frying pan until well browned.
Simmer
Place the mutton in a saucepan and cover with stock.
Add the carrot, turnips, and onions to the saucepan.
Cover and simmer gently for 1.5 hours until the vegetables are done.
Remove the vegetables and keep them warm.
Continue cooking the mutton for 4 to 5 hours until done.
Take the mutton out of the pan and keep it hot.
Make the gravy and serve
Cool the gravy.
Remove the fat from the gravy.
Reduce the gravy to about 1 pint.
Thicken the gravy with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 2 tablespoons of stock.
Return the meat to the gravy and cook slowly for 30 minutes.
Chop the vegetables.
Toss the chopped vegetables in a little butter until hot.
Arrange the vegetables around the mutton on a dish.
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.
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together21,601 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,874 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mutton
- Long slow simmering turns its tough connective tissue tender and gives the gravy its rich meaty flavour.
- Flour
- Browns the meat's surface and, later, thickens the gravy into a smooth body.
- Stock
- Forms the cooking liquid that becomes the gravy, carrying savoury flavour from the meat.
- Butter
- Adds richness and gloss when tossed with the cooked vegetables.
The step that matters
Frying the mutton until well browned. Browning creates deep savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Dry, well-browned meat flavours the gravy, while pale meat gives a flat, boiled taste.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, carrot, turnip, butter):
- Leekfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, carrot, turnip, butter. 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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