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Kid, Roast

A roasted young goat seasoned with bacon, butter, flour, red‑currant jelly, mutton gravy, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kid, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Soak the kid in a marination as directed in the Kid recipe.

  2. Bind strips of fat bacon around the kid and cover it with buttered paper.

  3. Place it over a clear fire and baste liberally.

  4. About 30 minutes before it is done, remove the paper and bacon, dredge flour over the kid, and continue basting.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Dissolve the red-currant jelly in the mutton gravy, add the claret, and serve the sauce in a 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  5. Currant + muttontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young kid
Is the meat being roasted, so it sets the main flavour and texture of the dish.
Flour
Dusted on near the end to help form a browned, crisp surface as basting continues.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity to the sauce, balancing the rich gravy.
Mutton gravy
Forms the savoury body of the sauce, carrying the flavour of the roast.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine aroma that brightens the rich, meaty sauce.

The step that matters

Dredging flour and continuing to baste. Flour added late, then basted, forms a browned crust; added too early or left dry it can burn or taste raw, and basting keeps the surface moist and evenly coloured.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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