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Mutton Custard

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mutton Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Shred the mutton suet very fine and place it in a double boiler with the cinnamon and milk, reserving ½ cup of milk.

  2. Cook for one hour, then strain the mixture.

  3. Return the strained liquid to the double boiler and place on the fire.

  4. Mix the flour with the reserved cold milk to form a smooth paste, then stir it into the hot mixture.

  5. Add the salt and cook for ten minutes.

  6. Serve the custard to the patient, offering half a pint every four to five hours.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + muttontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together814 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Cuminfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, mutton, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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