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Mutton, Ragout Of, Cold

A cold ragout made from mutton cutlets simmered with onion, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton, Ragout Of, Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Divide the meat into cutlets and trim away some of the fat.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the butter or fat in a stewpan and fry the meat quickly on both sides.

  2. Remove the meat and add the onion to the pan, frying until lightly browned.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour and cook until well browned, then add the stock or water.

  4. Bring to a boil, season to taste, and add the diced carrot and turnip.

  5. Return the meat to the pan, cover closely, and cook gently for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets on a hot dish, strain the sauce over, and garnish with boiled vegetable dice.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender after gentle braising in the sauce.
Butter or fat
Browns the meat and onion and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps it brown when cooked in the fat.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in the pan.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the sauce as it cooks.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until well browned. Browning the flour in the fat develops nutty flavour and colour in the sauce, and cooking it before adding liquid helps prevent lumps and a raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, 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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