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Spiced Mutton

A spiced mutton stew simmered with onions, celery, raisins, and a rice flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the mutton into walnut-sized pieces.

  2. Sprinkle the pieces with curry powder, allspice, coriander, ginger, and cloves.

  3. Dredge each piece with pepper.

Brown and simmer

  1. Melt the dripping in a pan.

  2. Fry the meat with the diced onions until golden brown.

  3. Pour off excess fat.

  4. Add the brown stock.

  5. Stir in the shredded celery.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. Skim off any foam.

  8. Cook until the meat is very tender.

  9. Add the sultana raisins half an hour before serving.

  10. Add salt to taste.

  11. Add chutney to taste.

Thicken and serve

  1. Blend the rice flour with a little stock.

  2. Add to the pot to thicken the sauce.

  3. Serve with your choice of vegetables.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Coriander + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Allspice + coriandertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Lean meat that becomes tender and flavourful during long, slow simmering.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet while browning, adding savoury depth to the stew.
Dripping
Fat that carries the spices and browns the meat and onions.
Brown stock
Liquid that forms the body of the stew and dissolves the savoury flavours.
Rice flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and soft fruity pops of flavour to the stew.

The step that matters

Blend the rice flour with a little stock before adding it. Raw flour added directly to hot liquid clumps and cannot disperse evenly. Mixing it with cold or cool stock first creates a smooth slurry that thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, celery, allspice, coriander, ginger, clove, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, celery, allspice, coriander, ginger, clove, pepper. 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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