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Gravy for Mutton

A savory gravy made from mutton bones, vegetables, and seasonings, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Gravy for Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Place mutton bones in a pot with garlic.

  2. Add shallot, carrot, celery (or celery seeds), and water or stock.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the gravy and thicken it.

  5. Add sugar browning and ketchup, and port if using.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a dish with gravy poured around it.

  2. Garnish with glazed onions.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton bones
Provide the meat and collagen that give the gravy body and savory flavor as they stew.
Water or stock
Forms the liquid base that extracts flavor and gelatin from the bones during stewing.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that round out the gravy's savory depth.
Port
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Strain the gravy and thicken it. Straining removes bone fragments and solids so the gravy is smooth, and thickening gives it the body needed to coat the meat rather than run off it.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, shallot, carrot, celery, ketchup, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, shallot, carrot, celery, ketchup, sugar. 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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