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To Roast a Haunch of Mutton Venison-Form

A roast haunch of mutton seasoned with butter, salt, flour, and served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast a Haunch of Mutton Venison-Form

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut a hind quarter of mutton and let it steep in sheep's blood for 5-6 hours.

  2. Hang the meat in a cool, dry place for up to 3 weeks.

  3. Rub the meat with a cloth.

  4. Cover the meat with fresh butter.

  5. Sprinkle the meat with coarse sea salt and flour.

Roast and serve

  1. Butter a sheet of paper, cover the meat with it and tie it securely.

  2. Roast the meat for 2.5 hours.

  3. Baste the meat with butter during roasting.

  4. Remove the paper before serving.

  5. Serve the roast with gravy and 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  5. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Hind quarter of mutton
The main cut of meat, whose texture and flavour form the dish.
Fresh butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the surface brown during roasting.
Flour
Helps the surface brown and forms a crust that can thicken the pan juices.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, fatty flavour of mutton.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, 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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