Skip to main content
Main

Doctor's Mutton-Steak, Fried

A fried mutton steak served with mixed vegetables, mushroom ketchup, broth, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Doctor's Mutton-Steak, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Season and grill

  1. Season both sides of the mutton steaks with salt and pepper.

  2. Grill the steaks over a charcoal fire, turning them several times.

  3. Serve the steaks on a hot dish.

Brown and braise

  1. Pour mushroom ketchup over each steak.

  2. Brown the steaks in a frying pan or shallow stew pan.

  3. Cover the steaks with mixed vegetables.

  4. Moisten with mutton broth and wine, then cover tightly.

  5. Simmer gently, shaking occasionally to prevent sticking.

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. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton steaks
Provide the main meat, which browns on the surface and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth that enriches the meat and the cooking liquid.
Mixed seasonal vegetables
Add sweetness, colour and soft texture to the finished dish.
Mutton broth
Supplies moisture and body to the liquid that gently cooks the steaks.
White or red wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, not at a boil. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue in the mutton break down slowly, so the meat turns tender. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and can evaporate the liquid too quickly, causing the steaks to stick and scorch.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, mushroom, carrot, turnip, celery, sorrel):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, mushroom, carrot, turnip, celery, sorrel. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes