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Roast Spiced Mutton

A roasted mutton leg seasoned with salt, salt pork, onion, pepper, cloves, and served with a flour-thickened gravy and chopped pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Roast Spiced Mutton

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mutton

  1. Pound the leg of mutton to tenderize it.

  2. Rub the mutton with coarse sea salt.

  3. Make gashes all over the mutton and insert pieces of salt pork, onion, whole pepper, and cloves.

Roast and finish

  1. Brown the mutton in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) without water.

  2. Once browned, add water and baste often.

  3. Cook for 2.5 hours.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour before serving.

  5. Chop the pickles finely and add them to the gravy.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Is the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy when roasted slowly.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy.
Salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the meat from within and enriches the flavor.
Pickles
Add a sharp acidity that cuts through the rich meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the mutton without water before adding liquid. Searing the surface in a hot oven first builds browned flavor through the Maillard reaction. Adding water too early would steam the meat instead of browning it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, pepper, clove, 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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