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Boiled Shoulder of Mutton with Oysters

A boiled mutton shoulder served with a sauce of oyster liquor, broth, butter, flour, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Boiled Shoulder of Mutton with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Sew the shoulder into a neat shape using a piece of stout cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the shoulder in boiling water, slightly salted, and cook for 18 minutes per pound.

  2. Once cooked, carefully unbind the meat and place it on a serving dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine equal parts oyster liquor and broth from the meat.

  2. Season the mixture, then thicken it with butter rolled in flour and add chopped parsley.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil and pour half over the meat, serving the rest 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Mutton + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Mutton shoulder
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that is cooked and served.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smooth, silky texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled into the butter, giving it body.
Oyster liquor
Adds a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Flour rolled in butter must be fully incorporated and the sauce brought to a boil so the starch swells and thickens; otherwise the sauce stays thin or tastes floury.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

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