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To Ragout Mutton

A savory ragout made with thinly sliced mutton, butter, flour, lemon, onion, herbs, mace, gravy, anchovy, and butter‑flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Ragout Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut thin slices of mutton against the grain, removing skin and fat.

Cook the ragout

  1. Melt butter in a stew-pan and sprinkle flour over it.

  2. Add lemon slices, chopped onion, sweet herbs, and mace to the pan.

  3. Stir in the mutton and cook for 5-6 minutes.

  4. Pour in gravy, add minced anchovy, and a piece of butter rolled in flour.

  5. Stir well and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with pickles and sliced lemon.

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. Mutton + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fine leg of mutton
Provides the meat that is cut into slices and braised in the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour during the initial cooking.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
½ pint of gravy
Forms the liquid base that cooks the mutton and becomes the sauce.
1 anchovy, minced
Adds savoury depth to the sauce without a distinctly fishy taste.

The step that matters

Stir in the mutton and cook for 5-6 minutes. Cooking the flour-butter base before adding liquid removes its raw taste and helps it thicken smoothly, while the meat is only briefly seared so it stays tender rather than tough.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, flour, lemon, onion, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, lemon, onion, anchovy. 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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