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Mutton, Neck Of, Boiled

A boiled mutton neck served with caper or parsley sauce and boiled turnips and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton, Neck Of, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Shorten the ribs and saw off the chine bone of the mutton neck.

  2. Pare off excess fat and boil slowly in plenty of salted water.

Cook and skim

  1. Skim carefully and remove fat from the surface.

  2. Boil turnips and carrots with the mutton for about 15 minutes per pound.

Serve

  1. Serve with caper or parsley sauce and garnish with boiled turnips and carrots cut into thin strips.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Sauce + turniptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose connective tissue softens into tender meat during slow boiling.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a tender texture after boiling, and serve as the garnish.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and colour, and are cut into strips to garnish the dish.
Caper sauce or parsley sauce
Adds acidity and herbal flavour that balance the rich, fatty meat.

The step that matters

Skim carefully and remove fat from the surface. Fat and foam rise to the surface of the simmering liquid. Removing them keeps the broth clear and stops the meat tasting greasy.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sauce, turnip. 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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