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Stewed Mutton

A slow-cooked mutton stew with vegetables, potatoes, parsley, and pepper, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Mutton

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the mutton into even-sized pieces and wash them.

  2. Place the mutton in a saucepan and cover with cold water.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

Stew

  1. Add the vegetables (except potatoes) and cover.

  2. Let it stew for 2 hours.

  3. Add the potatoes, parsley, red pepper, and salt.

  4. Simmer for an additional hour.

  5. If needed, add more hot water.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken with flour mixed with water.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose connective tissue softens into tender bites during long gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, smooth gravy when mixed with water first.
Potatoes
Absorb flavour from the broth and soften into starchy bites that help body the stew.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after boiling. Foam rises from proteins and impurities released as the meat heats. Removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, celery, potato, parsley, pepper, flour):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, celery, potato, parsley, pepper, flour. 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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