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Roast Mutton

Roast mutton is a shoulder cut seasoned with salt and pepper, roasted and basted with its own dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Season the mutton with coarse sea salt and pepper.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the mutton in a roasting pan and roast for about 1.5 to 2 hours, or until cooked to your liking.

  2. Baste occasionally with the dripping.

  3. Let the mutton rest before carving.

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. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 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
Is the main cut, its fat and connective tissue soften and enrich the meat during long roasting.
Dripping
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps keep the surface moist and browned when basted.

The step that matters

Let the mutton rest before carving. Resting lets juices redistribute through the meat. Carving straight from the oven lets them run out, leaving the meat drier.

“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.

More roasted mutton recipes

Shoulder 24Loin 20Saddle 13Leg 9Neck 7Breast 6 See all 20 →

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