Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Ragout of Mutton
Ingredients
Directions
Cut the mutton into pieces.
Season with French dressing, coarse sea salt, and pepper.
Cook in a pot over medium heat until tender.
Serve hot.
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.
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Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,442 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mutton
- Provides the main body of the dish; its connective tissue softens into tender meat during slow, moist cooking.
The step that matters
Cook until tender. Mutton is tough meat with connective tissue that needs gentle, moist heat over time to break down. Stopping early leaves it chewy, while overly high heat can toughen the muscle fibres.
“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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