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Shoulder of Mutton

A shoulder of mutton prepared with lemon juice, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Shoulder of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Carve

  1. Carve the shoulder of mutton from the top, taking out moderately thick wedge-shaped slices.

  2. Help pieces from the blade bone by cutting on both sides of the bone.

  3. Cut the fat into thin slices.

  4. Turn the joint and carve the under side horizontally along the length.

Season and serve

  1. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon under the shoulder, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and add a small piece of butter.

  2. Reunite the parts until the butter melts, then transfer the shoulder to another plate.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Shoulder of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose fat and lean layers give the dish its body and juiciness.
Butter
Melts over the carved meat, adding richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Juice of ½ lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and butter.

The step that matters

Reunite the parts until the butter melts. The butter must melt into the warm meat so it coats the slices evenly instead of pooling. Keeping the pieces together while it melts lets the fat and lemon juice spread through the meat.

“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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