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Loin of Mutton Stewed

A stew made from mutton loin, simmered with water, pyroligneous acid, butter, sweet herbs, onions, and finished with red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Loin of Mutton Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the skin and bone the loin of mutton.

  2. Roll the meat and place it in a stewpan with water.

Stew and serve

  1. Add pyroligneous acid, butter, sweet herbs, and onions.

  2. Stew for nearly four hours.

  3. Strain the gravy, add red wine, heat, and serve with jelly sauce.

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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + red winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton loin (in the method)
The main meat, whose connective tissue softens into tenderness during long stewing.
Pyroligneous acid
Adds a smoky, savoury flavour to the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the gravy.
Onions
Soften during stewing, adding savoury sweetness and aroma to the liquid.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.
Sweet herbs
Infuse the stewing liquid with aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Stew for nearly four hours. Long, gentle stewing breaks down the connective tissue in mutton loin, which makes the meat tender. If the stew is cut short or boils hard, the meat can stay tough and the gravy can turn cloudy or greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, red wine):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, red wine. 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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