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Cold Roast Mutton

A leg of mutton roasted with cloves, salt pork, and vinegar, then cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

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

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of mutton and skewer it securely.

  2. Trim the mutton nicely and stick cloves into it about one inch apart.

  3. Place slices of salt pork under and over the mutton in a dripping pan.

  4. Pour the vinegar over the mutton.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for four hours, basting every twenty minutes.

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. Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  2. Clove + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. 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

Leg of mutton
Forms the main body of the roast and provides the meat that is cooked slowly.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic flavour that penetrates the meat as it cooks.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the meat moist during the long bake.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps tenderise the meat.

The step that matters

Basting every twenty minutes during the bake. Regular basting spreads fat and liquid over the surface, keeping the meat from drying out over the four-hour bake at low heat.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pork, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Pepperfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, vinegar. 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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