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Mutton Stewed with Celery

A stew of mutton with carrots, turnip, celery, and a lemon‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mutton Stewed with Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the mutton

  1. Place the mutton in a stewpan and cover with water.

  2. Add the chopped carrot and turnip, and season lightly.

  3. Cook until nearly done, then remove the meat and strain the gravy.

Finish the stew

  1. Return the meat and gravy to the stewpan with forcemeat balls and celery.

  2. Let it stew gently until fully cooked.

  3. Mix the egg yolks, flour, and lemon juice with a little gravy, then stir into the stewpan, preventing curdling.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Slow cooking turns the tough connective tissue tender and flavours the gravy.
Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy into a smooth, rich sauce as they set gently with heat.
Flour
Stabilises the egg yolk mixture and helps thicken the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and helps keep the egg mixture stable.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the gravy as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks curdle if they get too hot or are added undiluted. Tempering them with a little warm gravy first, then stirring gently over low heat, keeps the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, meat, carrot, turnip, celery, egg, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, meat, carrot, turnip, celery, egg, flour. 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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