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Cold Mutton

Cold Mutton is a chilled dish of sliced mutton served with hard‑boiled eggs, parsley, capers, and a mustard‑vinegar‑oil sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Arrange the dish

  1. Slice the cold mutton into thin, even slices.

  2. Place a round cutter in the center of an oval dish and arrange the mutton slices around it, overlapping slightly.

  3. Fill the empty spaces with chopped hard-boiled egg whites and yolks, keeping them separate.

  4. Create a border of chopped yolk around the meat, followed by a border of chopped white, and then a border of chopped parsley.

  5. Remove the cutter and place a rose or small bunch of violets in the center.

  6. Add one or three capers on each mound of yolk and sprinkle some on the white border.

  7. Garnish with radishes around the dish.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix mustard, pepper, and salt in a bowl, then gradually add vinegar while beating with a fork.

  2. Slowly incorporate oil in the same manner until well combined.

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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Capers + radishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 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

Shoulder of mutton
Forms the main body of the dish, served cold in thin slices.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add texture and richness through the chopped whites and yolks.
Oil
Adds fat and body, emulsifying with the vinegar and mustard into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Helps bind the sauce emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the oil to the sauce. Oil must be added slowly while beating so it disperses into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast lets the oil separate out, leaving a greasy, broken sauce instead of a smooth, combined one.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, egg, parsley, capers, rose, mustard, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, egg, parsley, capers, rose, mustard, pepper. 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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