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A Camp Dish

A mutton stew with onions, vegetables, vinegar, port wine, pepper, flour, and optional Harvey's sauce and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and port wine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 598 recipes mention both. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Place the mutton in a pot with chopped onions and vegetables.

  2. Add vinegar, port wine, black pepper, red pepper, and flour.

  3. If available, add Harvey's sauce and essence of anchovies.

Stew

  1. Cover the meat with water and let it stew for 1 hour, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

  2. If using a steam apparatus, do not add water.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Vinegar + port winetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Mutton + meattop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together935 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,463 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,203 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Slow stewing breaks down its connective tissue, making the meat tender and moist.
Onions
They soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the savoury base of the stew.
Vinegar
Its acidity brightens the flavour and helps soften the meat fibres.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer, more body-filled sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring during the 1-hour stew. Flour and onion sugars settle and scorch on the base of the pot if left alone. Frequent stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the liquid from catching, so the sauce stays smooth and free of burnt flavour.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, vinegar, port wine, pepper, flour, sauce, meat):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Mustardabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, port wine, pepper, flour, sauce, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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