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Roast Mutton

Roast mutton baked with water, flour, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Roast Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the roast well and dry it with a clean cloth.

  2. Place the roast in a dripping pan and add a little water to baste it initially.

Roast

  1. If the fire is very hot, roast for 12 minutes per pound.

  2. If it browns too quickly, cover it with a sheet of white paper.

  3. Baste often.

  4. Fifteen minutes before it is done, dredge the meat lightly with flour and baste with butter.

  5. Garnish the dish with parsley.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Mutton + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,915 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Flour and butter 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

Mutton roast
Provides the main protein, which firms and browns as it cooks.
Flour
Dusted on the surface to help form a light browned crust.
Butter
Basting fat that adds richness and promotes golden browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Covering the roast if it browns too quickly. Surface sugars and proteins brown faster than the interior cooks, so high heat can scorch the outside before the centre is done. A sheet of paper shields the surface while heat continues to penetrate.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, butter. 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.

More roasted mutton recipes

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

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