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Boiled Mutton

Boiled mutton with carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, mint, butter, and capers, served in a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Plunge the mutton into a kettle of boiling salted water for 15 minutes.

  2. Reduce heat and cook slowly for 15 minutes per pound.

  3. Half an hour before serving, add the carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, and mint.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat, brush with butter, and keep warm.

  2. Strain some of the cooking liquid for a white sauce and reserve the rest for soup stock.

  3. Chill the reserved liquid to separate the fat, skim it, and thicken with a white roux.

  4. Stir in a spoonful of capers and serve in a sauceboat.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Slow simmering in salted water cooks the meat until tender and flavours the cooking liquid.
Butter
Brushed over the hot meat, it adds richness and a glossy finish.
White roux (in the method)
Flour and fat cooked together thicken the strained liquid into a smooth white sauce.
Capers
Their sharp, briny acidity cuts through the richness of the mutton and sauce.

The step that matters

Chilling and skimming the reserved liquid. Chilling lets the fat rise and solidify so it can be lifted off; skimming it thoroughly keeps the stock and roux-thickened sauce from tasting greasy.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, butter. 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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