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Dinner — Roast of Mutton with Potatoes

A roast mutton served with potatoes, canned tomatoes, rhubarb sauce, baked custards, and fruit cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,798 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dinner — Roast of Mutton with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season the roast of mutton with salt and pepper.

Roast

  1. Place the mutton in a roasting pan and surround it with potatoes.

  2. Roast in the oven until the meat is cooked to your liking.

Serve

  1. Serve with canned tomatoes and rhubarb sauce.

  2. For dessert, serve baked custards and fruit cake.

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. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + rhubarbtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Tomato + rhubarbtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutanol (fusel, malty).

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and browned as it roasts.
Potatoes
Roast alongside the meat, absorbing rendered fat and browning at the surface.
Baked custards
Set through gentle heat, giving a creamy, smooth dessert texture.
Fruit cake
Adds sweetness and a dense, moist crumb for dessert.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, potato, tomato, sauce. 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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