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Roast Mutton

A roasted mutton served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,077 recipes. The science ↓

Roast Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Roast

  1. Place the meat in a roasting pan with ½ cup of water.

  2. Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the meat when you first put it in the oven.

  3. Roast for about 12 minutes per pound, basting often with salt and water, then with the gravy.

  4. If browning too fast, cover with a large sheet of white paper.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim the gravy well and thicken slightly with browned flour before serving.

  2. Serve with currant jelly.

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 + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  2. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Supplies the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts slowly in liquid.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan gravy, giving it body and a toasted, nutty flavour.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balances the rich, savoury roasted meat.

The step that matters

Covering the meat if it browns too fast. Surface sugars and proteins brown quickly at high oven heat, so the exterior can darken or burn before the centre cooks through. A loose cover of paper slows browning while heat reaches the interior.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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