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Boiled Mutton with Caper Sauce

A boiled leg of mutton served with a caper sauce and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add 1 tablespoon of salt to the boiling water.

  2. Wash the leg of mutton and rub salt into the mutton.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Cook the mutton for 2 to 3 hours, depending on desired doneness and size.

  2. Boil 1 pint of milk in a separate pot.

  3. Thicken the milk smoothly with flour.

  4. Add butter, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of capers or mint sauce to the thickened milk.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton with rice as a side.

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 + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Capers + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 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
Long, moist cooking in liquid makes the meat tender and gives the dish its main body.
Flour
Starch thickens the hot milk into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, adding creaminess and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and rounds out its flavour.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich milk sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk smoothly with flour. Flour must be whisked into the hot milk so its starch disperses evenly. Added in clumps, it cooks into lumps that stay in the sauce.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, milk, flour, butter, pepper, rice. 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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