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Ragout of Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with peas, carrots, onions, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ragout of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the base

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the flour and brown it.

  3. Stir in the diced carrot, onion, and seasonings along with the mutton.

  4. Cook, stirring frequently, until everything is browned.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the stock or water and the meat.

  2. Cover and let it simmer for two hours.

  3. Add the peas just before serving.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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 and rich flavour that the sauce is built around.
Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the liquid into a ragout sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the flour and onion and adds richness.
Onion
Softens and browns, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Carrot
Softens during simmering, adding gentle sweetness to the sauce.
Peas
Added at the end so they stay bright green and tender-firm.

The step that matters

Browning the flour and meat. Browning the flour in butter and searing the meat with the vegetables builds the Maillard flavours that give the ragout its depth. Stirring frequently prevents scorching, which would leave bitter notes in the sauce.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, clove, onion, parsley, carrot. 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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