Name: Boiled Mutton
Ingredients: mutton; salt; butter; drawn butter

Why it works: Mutton and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,781 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

mutton
salt
butter
drawn butter

Directions

Cook the mutton

Place the mutton in a large pot of boiling salted water.
Cook for 12 minutes per pound.
Remove the mutton and wipe it carefully with a hot, wet cloth.

Finish and serve

Butter the mutton all over.
Serve with drawn butter in a sauceboat.
Season the pot liquor and let it cool before refrigerating.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 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

Mutton: Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in simmering water to become tender.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, glossy coating over the cooked meat.
Drawn butter: Provides moisture and richness for serving alongside the meat.

“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.