Name: Crown Roast
Ingredients: Rack of mutton; Saratoga potatoes

Why it works: Mutton and potato work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Crown Roast

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Rack of mutton
Saratoga potatoes

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare a rack of mutton by removing excess fat.
Fill the center with Saratoga potatoes.
Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until cooked to your preference.

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.

Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rack of mutton: Forms the main cut of meat; its fat and lean tissue set the flavor and juiciness of the roast.
Saratoga potatoes: Fill the center of the crown, adding starch and absorbing drippings as the roast cooks.

“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.