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Ragout of Mutton or Lamb

A ragout made with cooked mutton or lamb, onion, butter, flour, stock, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ragout of Mutton or Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim all fat from the cooked meat and cut the lean into 1‑inch square pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the onion and cook it in butter until pale brown.

  2. Add flour to the onion, mix well, and pour in the mutton stock or boiling water.

  3. Stir until it comes to a boil and thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Add Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, the meat, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Simmer for a few moments and 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Mutton or lamb
Provides the main meat and savory flavor of the ragout.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while cooking the onion to a golden color.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Mutton stock or boiling water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth and a tangy, slightly sharp note.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and meat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and liquid. Flour must be mixed evenly into the onion and fat before the liquid goes in, and the mixture must be stirred while it comes to a boil. Otherwise the flour clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smooth and thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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

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