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Fricasseed Mutton, with Capers

A stewed mutton dish thickened with flour and flavored with capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricasseed Mutton, with Capers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the breast of mutton into small pieces.

  2. Steam the mutton with bay leaves, cloves, salt, and pepper for 30 minutes, covered closely. Shake the pan several times.

Make the sauce

  1. Add warm water.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Thicken the liquid with flour.

  5. Stir in capers or pickled nasturtiums.

Serve

  1. Lay the meat in the sauce.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle cooking in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth sauce that coats the meat.
Capers or pickled nasturtiums
Add a sharp, acidic bite that balances the rich mutton and sauce.

The step that matters

Steam covered closely, then simmer gently. Keeping the pan tightly covered traps steam so the mutton cooks evenly in its own moisture. Simmering slowly rather than boiling breaks down connective tissue gently, keeping the meat tender instead of tough and stringy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, flour, capers, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, flour, capers, lemon. 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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