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Roast Saddle of Mutton

Roast Saddle of Mutton is a roasted mutton saddle served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Roast Saddle of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the mutton

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the saddle of mutton in a roasting pan and pour boiling water over it.

  3. Roast for 12 minutes per pound, basting often.

  4. When it begins to brown, cover with white paper, lifting it to baste.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, remove the paper, dredge the mutton with flour, baste with butter, and brown.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim the fat from the gravy, thicken with browned flour, season, and boil once.

  2. Serve the gravy in a boat and pass currant jelly with the mutton.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  5. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and butter 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

Saddle of mutton
Is the main meat, cooked slowly so its fat renders and the meat stays moist.
Butter
Basting fat that helps the surface brown and take on color near the end.
Flour
Dredged onto the surface to help form a browned crust, and browned flour thickens the gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that cut through the richness of the roasted meat.

The step that matters

Covering with white paper. Covering the meat once it starts to brown slows surface browning so the outside does not burn while the inside finishes cooking. Lifting it to baste keeps the surface moist.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, 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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