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Haunch of Mutton a LA Venison

A preserved mutton haunch seasoned with celery salt, brown sugar, and currant jelly, then roasted with a flour‑water paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Haunch of Mutton a LA Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the mutton

  1. Mix celery salt with brown sugar.

  2. Rub the mixture into the mutton and place it in a deep dish for 4 days.

  3. Baste the mutton 3 to 4 times a day with the draining liquid.

  4. After 4 days, wipe the mutton dry and rub in an additional ½ pound of brown sugar mixed with a little common salt.

  5. Hang the mutton haunch downwards and wipe it daily until used.

Roast and serve

  1. In winter, keep it for 2 to 3 weeks and roast it in a paste made with flour and water.

  2. Remove the paste 15 minutes before serving and serve with currant jelly.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  4. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Celery + curranttop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

What each ingredient does

Celery salt
Seasons the meat and contributes salt that helps preserve it during the cure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the salty cure on the meat.
Flour
Forms a protective paste around the haunch during roasting, shielding the meat from direct heat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweet-tart acidity that cuts through the rich, salty flavour of the mutton.

The step that matters

Wiping the mutton dry before the second sugar rub. Surface moisture would dilute the sugar and salt mixture, so the mutton must be wiped dry first for the rub to adhere and cure the surface evenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, sugar, flour. 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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