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Mutton with Flour Cakes

A mutton dish with flour cakes, almonds, raisins, pistachios, and spices, finished with lime juice and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mutton with Flour Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mutton base

  1. Heat the ghee in a pot.

  2. Add the chopped onions and cook until golden.

  3. Add the mutton and cook until nearly dry.

  4. Add water and simmer.

Make and cook the flour cakes

  1. Mix the flour with water to form a thin paste.

  2. Cut the paste into small cakes.

  3. Add the cakes to the pot.

  4. Shake the pot gently until the cakes are cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Cool the mixture.

  2. Stir in the lime juice.

  3. Stir in the sugar syrup.

  4. Add the bruised almonds, raisins, and pistachios.

  5. Serve.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lime + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + limetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main protein and savory meaty body of the dish.
Flour
Forms the paste that is cut into cakes, giving the dish its starchy structure and body.
Ghee
Adds fat for frying the onions and mutton, carrying flavour and browning the base.
Onions
Cooked until golden to build sweetness and savory depth in the base.
Sugar
Made into a syrup and stirred in, adding sweetness that balances the spices and lime.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich mutton and sweet elements.

The step that matters

Shaking the pot gently while the flour cakes cook. Flour cakes cooked in liquid can stick, break or turn gummy if stirred hard. Gentle shaking moves them without tearing, while the starch sets fully cooked through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, ghee, sugar, lime, almond, raisin):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, ghee, sugar, lime, almond, raisin. 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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