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Cold Mutton

A sauce made with butter, flour, stock, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, spices, pepper, salt, and pickled gherkins or capers, served with cold mutton slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Rub a saucepan with garlic or shallot.

  2. Melt butter and flour together in the saucepan.

  3. Add stock and vinegar, then season with Worcestershire sauce, spices, pepper, and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce and add slices of cold mutton.

  2. Half an hour before serving, add sliced pickled gherkins or capers and warm through.

  3. Serve with or without bread sippets.

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 + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Butter
Melted with flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Combined with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Stock or broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the mutton is warmed in.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the mutton.
Pickled gherkins or capers
Add sharp acidity and salty brininess to the sauce.

The step that matters

Melt butter and flour together in the saucepan. Cooking the flour in the melted butter until smooth forms a roux. Adding liquid to raw flour can leave lumps and a floury taste, so the mixture should be stirred well before the stock goes in.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, vinegar, sauce, pepper, bread):

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar, sauce, pepper, bread. 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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