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Breast of Mutton

A boiled mutton breast served with caper or white onion sauce, accompanied by turnips and potatoes or spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and potato work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Place the breast of mutton in cold water.

  2. As it boils, carefully skim the surface.

  3. Let it simmer for about two hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with caper sauce or white onion sauce.

  2. Accompany with turnips and potatoes or turnips and spinach.

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. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Sauce + turniptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Fatty connective tissue softens during long, gentle simmering, making the meat tender and succulent.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface as it boils. Foam and scum rise as the water heats. Removing them keeps the broth clearer and stops impurities from clouding the liquid or spoiling the flavour.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sauce, turnip. 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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