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Mutton Mullagatawnee

A mutton stew with curry, herbs, and ground rice thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Mullagatawnee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the lean meat from the mutton into small pieces.

  2. Boil the remaining meat and bones in 8 quarts of water with sweet herbs, parsley, mace, and onions.

  3. Strain the broth and remove the fat.

Make the curry

  1. In a stewpan, combine the pieces of lean mutton with curry powder, pepper, salt, and a little butter.

  2. Simmer gently until the gravy is drawn.

  3. Add the strained broth to the mutton and boil until the meat is tender.

  4. Thicken the soup with ground rice until it is thicker than cream.

  5. If needed, adjust seasoning with more curry powder.

  6. Boil for an additional hour and serve with boiled rice.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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
Provides the main meat and, from the bones, the rich body of the broth.
Ground rice
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a creamy body.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines the dish.
Butter
Adds fat that carries the curry spices and enriches the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken with ground rice. Ground rice thickens by absorbing liquid and swelling as it heats. Added too early or in too large an amount, it can make the soup gluey or pasty, so it should be stirred in gradually until the soup is thicker than cream.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, onion, pepper, butter, rice. 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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