Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Canton of Lamb
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 the mutton
Place the shoulder of mutton on a table with the inner part facing up.
Cut out the shoulder blade and boil it to clean thoroughly.
With a sharp knife, cut out the first length of the foreleg bone and half of the second, breaking it off between the first and second joints without cutting through the skin.
Trim the end of the bone to resemble a duck's bill.
Stuff and roast
Stuff the shoulder with forcemeat, sew it up, turn it over, and truss it to look like a duck.
Place it in a roasting pan on a few scraps of vegetables and herbs, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 20 minutes per pound.
Prepare the vegetables
Peel the carrots and turnips, cut them into small balls.
Boil the balls in well-salted water until tender.
Place the boiled vegetables in cold water to retain their color.
Make the sauce and serve
Transfer the cooked mutton to a hot dish and keep it warm while making the sauce.
Make the sauce according to the previous recipe for Breast of Veal.
Heat the vegetables in the sauce.
Arrange the vegetables around the mutton.
Place the shoulder blade, scraped and notched to resemble feathers, in the tail of the mutton.
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.
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together21,601 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,488 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mutton
- Provides the main meat, whose proteins set and collagen softens during slow roasting.
- Carrots
- Add natural sweetness and a tender texture once boiled.
- Turnips
- Add a mild, slightly sweet flavor and a tender texture once boiled.
- Onion
- Adds aroma and savory depth to the dish.
The step that matters
Roasting the stuffed shoulder. The stuffed joint is thick and the centre heats slowly, so the cooking time must match its weight. Too short leaves the middle underdone; too long dries the outer meat.
Swap the turnip
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, bread, onion, butter, egg):
- Leekfits better
- Potatofits better
- Asparagusfits about as well
- Turnipthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, bread, onion, butter, egg. 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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