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Ragout of Mutton

A hearty stew of mutton strips, sweetbreads, salt pork, onion, peas, and gravy thickened with flour and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ragout of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the onion in plenty of drippings until golden.

  2. Fry the mutton strips for 5 minutes.

  3. Parboil the sweetbreads, then place them in cold water to blanch.

  4. Wipe and dry the sweetbreads, then fry them in fat.

Stew

  1. Layer the salt pork in the bottom of a saucepan, followed by the mutton, sweetbreads, fried onion, and peas.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and parsley, then cover with gravy.

  3. Cover with a lid and stew gently for 1 hour.

  4. Bring to a boil, then remove the mutton and sweetbreads.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, stir in the beaten eggs, and cook for 1 minute over heat.

  2. Pour the thickened gravy over the meat and 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mutton + lambtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long gentle stew.
Sweetbreads
Add a soft, creamy texture after parboiling, blanching and frying.
Eggs
Beaten into the hot gravy, they help thicken and enrich it.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, deeper flavour.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan, adding savoury richness to the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten eggs into the thickened gravy. Egg proteins set when heated, so the gravy can turn grainy or curdle if it boils hard after the eggs go in. Cook gently and only for the stated minute.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, lamb, egg, pork, onion, pepper, parsley):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, lamb, egg, pork, onion, pepper, parsley. 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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