Skip to main content
Main

Scalloped Mutton and Tomatoes

A baked dish of sliced roast mutton and tomatoes layered with bread crumbs, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Mutton and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble

  1. In an earthen baking dish, layer bread crumbs on the bottom.

  2. Add alternating layers of cold roast mutton and sliced tomatoes.

  3. Season each layer with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and bits of butter.

  4. Finish with a top layer of tomatoes and spread bread crumbs over it.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 45 minutes and serve immediately.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast mutton
Provides the meat base, which is already cooked and only needs warming through in the oven.
Peeled tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that soften and flavour the layers as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Form a dry layer top and bottom that soaks up juices and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the top layer brown and the dish taste rounder.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, mutton, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes