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Mutton-mince, ‘a LA Menagere’

A stew of sliced mutton cooked in a vinegar and spice sauce thickened with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mutton-mince, ‘a LA Menagere’

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into small slices.

  2. Remove hard parts from the mutton slices.

  3. Place the slices in a flat stewpan.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine vinegar, peppercorns, cloves, parsley, and aromatics in a small stewpan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Reduce the mixture by one third.

  4. Add gravy to the mixture.

  5. Cook the mixture for 2 minutes.

  6. Thicken the sauce with kneaded butter.

  7. Strain the sauce over the mutton slices.

Warm and serve

  1. Warm the mutton gently without boiling the sauce to avoid toughening the meat.

  2. Serve the stew.

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 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

Leg of mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavourful in the stew.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the reduced sauce.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth of the sauce.
Kneaded butter
Thickens the sauce and gives it a glossy, rounded texture.

The step that matters

Warm the mutton gently without boiling the sauce. Boiling makes muscle proteins contract and squeeze out moisture, toughening the meat. Gentle heat keeps the slices tender and juicy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, vinegar, parsley, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, parsley, 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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