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Curried Mutton

A stew of cubed mutton simmered in stock, lemon, butter, sugar, and curry, served over Patna rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Curried Mutton

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Curried Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Combine stock, lemon juice, butter, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly.

  3. Add mutton and a sour apple to the pot.

  4. Cover with enough water to stew.

  5. Season with curry powder, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  6. Stir in the cream when serving.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil Patna rice in a separate pot with 2 quarts of boiling water for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the rice through a colander.

  3. Shake the rice well.

Serve

  1. Form a wall of rice around a serving dish.

  2. Pour the mutton mixture over the rice.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

  4. Serve very 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews slowly in the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the curry when stirred in at serving.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and a fruity tang that balances the richness of the meat and butter.
Patna rice
Forms the base that holds the curried mutton, absorbing and sitting under the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream when serving. Cream added to a boiling, acidic curry can split and turn grainy. Adding it off the heat at serving keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, butter, sugar, mutton, pepper, cream, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, butter, sugar, mutton, pepper, cream, 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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