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Neck of Mutton, with a Purée of Turnips

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Neck of Mutton, with a Purée of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Braise the neck of mutton in a white braise until tender.

  2. Boil the turnips in the braise until done.

  3. Remove the turnips, squeeze them dry, and rub them through a sieve.

  4. In a stewpan, combine the turnips with a little béchamel and heat while stirring until hot.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Place the mutton on a dish, pour some béchamel over it, and garnish with carrot.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

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

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sauce, pepper, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sauce, pepper, carrot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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