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Mutton with Turnips

A baked mutton and turnip dish cooked with butter, sugar, stock, flour, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mutton with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the turnips lengthwise into narrow strips.

Make the braise

  1. Heat frying fat or butter in a kettle.

  2. Add sugar and brown it while stirring.

  3. Drop in the turnips, salt, and stock.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the mixture, stir thoroughly, and add more stock or water if needed.

  5. Add the mutton, cover, and place in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours.

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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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 meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during the long covered braise.
Turnips
Add body and a mild sweetness as they soften in the stock.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy around the meat and turnips.
Sugar
Browns in the hot fat, adding colour and a caramel flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar. Sugar darkens quickly once it melts, and it turns bitter if left too long. Stir it constantly and stop as soon as it is a deep golden brown, before adding the turnips and stock.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, meat, flour, mutton):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, meat, flour, mutton. 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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