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To Ragout a Leg of Mutton

A ragout made from a thinly sliced leg of mutton cooked with lemon, onion, herbs, mace, gravy, and anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Ragout a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin and fat from the leg of mutton and cut it thinly against the grain.

  2. Butter a stew pan and sprinkle flour in it.

  3. Add the lemon, onion, sweet herbs, and mace to the pan with the meat.

Cook

  1. Stir for 1-2 minutes, then add the gravy.

  2. Mix the minced anchovy with butter and flour.

  3. Stir the mixture into the pan and cook for 6 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the ragout hot.

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. Mutton + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Leg of mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender in the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the meat.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid that forms the body of the ragout.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth that blends into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour mixture into the pan. Flour needs to be cooked briefly in fat and liquid to lose its raw taste and to thicken evenly. Adding it in lumps or without enough stirring can leave clumps and a floury flavour in the sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, lemon, onion, anchovy. 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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