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Boiled Mutton with Caper Sauce

A boiled mutton shank served with a caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Trim the outer skin from the mutton to reduce the woolly taste.

  2. Remove the bone and dredge the meat with flour and black pepper.

  3. Place the mutton in a small deep pot.

Cook the mutton

  1. Add boiling water and bring to a gentle boil.

  2. Cook gently on the back of the stove for about 2 hours.

  3. Place the mutton on a platter.

  4. Season the mutton with salt and pepper.

Make the caper sauce

  1. Skim the fat from the gravy, which should reduce to about 1 cup.

  2. Blend 1 teaspoon of flour with 1 teaspoon of butter.

  3. Stir the mixture into the gravy and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Add salt to taste and stir in the capers.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  6. Serve the sauce poured around the mutton or in a gravy tureen.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Capers + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton shank
Slow simmering in liquid breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Flour
Dredging the meat and thickening the butter blend lightly thickens the gravy into a sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds fat for a smooth, rounded flavour when blended with flour.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts the richness of the mutton and gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat from the gravy. Fat left on the reduced gravy makes the sauce greasy and dulls its flavour, so it should be skimmed before the flour and butter are stirred in.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, pepper, butter, capers, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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