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Mutton, Breast of

A stew of mutton breast, onions, herbs, and peas cooked in a browned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton, Breast of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into pieces about 2 inches square.

  2. In a stewpan, heat a little fat or butter and fry the mutton until nicely browned.

  3. Dredge the browned mutton in a little flour.

Stew

  1. Slice the onions and add them with the herbs to the stewpan.

  2. Pour in enough water to just cover the meat and simmer until tender.

Finish with peas

  1. Remove the meat, strain the liquid, skim off the fat, and return the meat and gravy to the stewpan.

  2. Add the green peas and boil gently until cooked.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the browned meat and helps thicken the gravy as it cooks.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the gravy as they soften.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, tender texture at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Mutton breast is a tough, fatty cut; it needs slow, gentle simmering in just enough liquid to break down its connective tissue. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and make the gravy cloudy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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