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Ragout of Mutton or Lamb

A slow‑cooked stew of mutton or lamb with onion, carrot, peas, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 or Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the onion and carrot, then brown the meat carefully to avoid burning.

Make the ragout

  1. Stir in the flour, then gradually add the water.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and add the tied herbs.

  3. Cover and simmer for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the peas 10 minutes before serving.

  2. Alternatively, use a casserole dish for cooking.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb neck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the meat and vegetables brown.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly body sauce.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the meat carefully. Browning develops deep, savory flavor through the Maillard reaction, but if the butter and meat scorch, the dish takes on bitter, burnt notes that carry into the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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