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Breast of Mutton Stewed with Celery

A stew of mutton breast with celery, garlic, lemon, saffron, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton Stewed with Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the mutton in a stewpan and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Add the water, celery, and chopped garlic.

  3. Simmer until the mutton is tender, skimming off any fat.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with lemon juice and saffron.

  2. Stir the mixture into the gravy and let it thicken.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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.
Celery
Adds vegetable body and a fresh, savory flavor to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavor of the mutton.

The step that matters

Simmer until the mutton is tender, skimming off any fat.. Gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in mutton slowly, so it turns tender instead of tough. Skimming removes rendered fat that would otherwise make the gravy greasy.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, nutmeg, celery, clove, flour, 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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