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Boiled Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton served with a drawn butter sauce of flour, butter, water, and pickled capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the mutton

  1. Wrap the leg of mutton in a floured cloth.

  2. Cover with boiling water.

  3. Add a little salt.

  4. Cook rapidly for 15 minutes.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour or more.

Make the caper sauce

  1. Rub together the flour and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the water from boiling the mutton.

  3. Stir over heat for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in the pickled capers before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Mutton + caperstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Mutton
Long simmering turns the tough meat tender and moist.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and gives it body.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture to the sauce.
Pickled capers
Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the rich butter.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and butter sauce over heat. Stirring while the mutton water is added and heated keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps and letting the starch thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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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