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Mutton to Eat Like Venison

A mutton stew made with bones, onions, anchovies, herbs, pepper, mace, carrot, bread crust, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton to Eat Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Boil and skin the loin of mutton.

Make the gravy

  1. Take the bones, onions, anchovies, sweet herbs, pepper, mace, carrot, and crust of bread; stew them together for gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy.

Finish the stew

  1. Place the mutton in a stewpan with the fat side down.

  2. Add the port wine and stew until thoroughly 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mace + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and acidity, deepening the flavour of the stew.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy as they cook down.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing the mutton until thoroughly cooked. Mutton needs long, gentle stewing so its connective tissue softens and the meat turns tender. Stopping early leaves it tough, while the gravy flavours only fully develop with the meat cooking in it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, pepper, carrot, bread, port wine):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, pepper, carrot, bread, port wine. 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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