Name: Cold Roast Mutton
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton; cloves; slices of salt pork; 1 pint of vinegar

Why it works: Mutton and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,239 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Cold Roast Mutton

Ingredients

1 leg of mutton
cloves
slices of salt pork
1 pint of vinegar

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Remove the bone from the leg of mutton and skewer it.
Trim the mutton nicely and stick cloves into it about 1 inch apart.
Place the mutton in a dripping pan with slices of salt pork underneath and on top.

Bake and serve

Pour the vinegar over the mutton.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours, basting every 20 minutes.
Serve cold.

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.

Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,239 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Clove + porktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,515 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,386 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pork + vinegartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,563 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Mutton + vinegartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together615 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist during the long, slow bake.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the meat a sharp, tangy flavour and helps tenderise its surface.
Salt pork: Adds fat and salty flavour that bastes the mutton and keeps it moist as it cooks.
Cloves: Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that penetrates the meat as it roasts.

The step that matters

Baking and basting. Cooking at a low 300°F for a long time lets connective tissue break down gently, so the meat becomes tender rather than dry. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and prevents it drying out and toughening over the four hours.