Name: A Mutton Stew
Ingredients: 2 cups cold mutton, cut into 1-inch squares; 1 onion, about the size of a hickory nut; 1 cup water; 2 tablespoons butter, cut into bits; 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; a pinch of mace; 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

Boil the onion in water for 15 minutes.
Strain the water and squeeze the onion to extract flavor.
Combine the onion water with the mutton, adjusting the amount of water based on the quantity of meat.

Make the stew

In a saucepan, bring the mixture to a boil.
Add butter and flour, stirring until no flour adheres.
Season with pepper, salt, mace, and lemon juice, then boil briefly.
Add the mutton, cover, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
Serve hot in a deep dish.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton: Provides the main protein and rich meaty flavor of the stew.
Onion: Boiled in water to release its flavor into the broth.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the stew's flavor and mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour: Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the stew body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour with butter. Flour stirred into hot liquid can clump; stirring until no flour adheres keeps the thickening smooth and even.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, butter, flour, pepper, lemon):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Turmericfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, butter, flour, pepper, lemon. 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.