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To Ragoo a Leg of Mutton

A ragoo of mutton cooked with butter, flour, lemon, onion, sweet herbs, mace, gravy, and anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Ragoo a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into thin slices against the grain.

  2. Butter a stewpan and sprinkle flour in it.

Cook

  1. Add the lemon, onion, sweet herbs, and mace to the pan.

  2. Add the mutton and stir for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Pour in the gravy and mix in the minced anchovy with butter and flour.

  4. Stir everything together for 6 minutes, then serve.

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

Mutton
Provides the main body of the dish as thin slices that become tender when stirred and simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, while helping the flour cook smoothly into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, coating sauce that clings to the meat.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid base of the sauce, so the meat cooks in moisture rather than drying out.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth and umami to the sauce without making it taste distinctly fishy.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter in the pan. Flour must be cooked briefly in fat before liquid is added. Stirring it in evenly prevents lumps, and a short cook removes raw starch taste so the sauce thickens smoothly.

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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