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A Delicious Way to Warm Up Cold Mutton

A stew of sliced cold mutton cooked with onions, butter, flour, gravy, spices, gherkins, capers, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Delicious Way to Warm Up Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter over medium heat and add the chopped onion.

  2. Stir the onions until they are browned but not burnt.

  3. Add the flour and mix well, frying for 5 minutes.

  4. Pour in the gravy, season with cayenne and salt, and let it boil to thicken.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the sugar, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, gherkins, capers, and mushrooms.

  2. Add the sliced mutton and let it simmer for a few minutes without boiling.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Fat that carries the onion's flavour and helps the flour form a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a sauce once it is fried and then boiled.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the stew and carries the other flavours.
Mutton
Provides the main meat, which stays tender when kept from boiling.
Gherkins
Add sharp acidity that balances the rich, thickened sauce.
Capers
Add briny, sharp acidity that brightens the rich meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Add the mutton without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in meat and makes it dry and stringy. Keeping the stew at a gentle simmer after the cold, sliced mutton goes in keeps it tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, sugar, vinegar, sauce, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sugar, vinegar, sauce, capers. 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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