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Mutton Tails

A stew of halved mutton tails cooked with broth, onions, herbs, and seasoned with salt, butter, bread crumbs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mutton Tails

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the mutton

  1. Cut mutton tails into halves and stew in broth or water until tender, skimming off any fat.

  2. Add salt, onions, parsley, and fine herbs while cooking.

  3. Once tender, remove mutton tails, drain, and score them.

Crumb and brown

  1. Dip scored mutton tails in dissolved butter and cover with seasoned bread crumbs.

  2. Let the crumbs dry, then pour more dissolved butter over and cover again with crumbs.

  3. Brown the mutton tails using a salamander.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy, add a little lemon juice, and serve with strained gravy poured over the mutton.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton tails
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Dissolved butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the bread crumbs brown in the salamander.
Seasoned bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust over the meat when browned.
Broth or water
Cooks the mutton gently and forms the base of the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Browning the crumb-coated tails with a salamander. Crumbs and butter can scorch quickly under intense direct heat before the crust sets. Watching closely lets the surface turn golden while the meat stays moist.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, parsley, butter, bread, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, parsley, butter, bread, lemon. 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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