Skip to main content
Sauce

For Boiled Mutton

A sauce made from cream, flour or corn‑starch, boiling water, and optional tomato flavoring and burnt brown sugar for boiled mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

For Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub flour or corn-starch into the cream.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture.

  3. Alternatively, brown some flour in a pan without burning it.

  4. Strain the meat juice into the browned flour while hot.

  5. Add cream and a little salt, then let it boil once more.

  6. For added flavor, include tomato and burnt brown sugar if desired.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + tomatotop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness, body and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow mouthfeel.
Flour or corn-starch
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Rub the flour or corn-starch into the cream before adding the boiling water. Starch clumps when it meets hot liquid unless it is first dispersed in a cold liquid. Blending it into the cream beforehand helps keep the sauce smooth, and boiling then lets the starch swell and thicken it.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes