Name: Mutton Stew and Okeen Peas
Ingredients: 1 breast of mutton, cut into small square pieces; flour for dredging; lard and butter for frying; coarse sea salt to taste; black pepper to taste; water; 1 quart green peas, boiled

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mutton Stew and Okeen Peas

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

Dredge the mutton pieces in flour.
Fry the mutton in a mixture of lard and butter until browned.

Stew

Season with salt and pepper, then cover with water.
Set over low heat and stew until the meat is tender.
Remove the meat and skim off the fat from the gravy.

Add the peas

Add the boiled peas to the strained gravy and let it boil gently until the peas are well done.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,331 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mutton + peastop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 through slow stewing in liquid.
Flour: Coats the meat so it browns in the fat and thickens the gravy.
Lard and butter: Fat for frying that browns the meat and adds rich flavour.
Green peas: Add sweetness and body to the gravy as they soften during simmering.

The step that matters

Skim the fat from the gravy. Fat that rises during stewing can make the gravy greasy and heavy, so removing it before adding the peas gives a cleaner, lighter sauce.

Swap the peas

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

Almondfits better
Beansfits better
Walnutfits about as well
Peasthe original

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

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Green Peas229 recipes

Haricot Mutton59 recipes

Mutton Soup56 recipes

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Mutton Stew and Okeen Peas