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Mutton, Chicken

A roast of veal, lamb, mutton, duck, and chicken with stale bread stuffing, butter, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mutton, Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the meats and wash them thoroughly.

  2. Rub coarse sea salt on the meats and place them in the oven with the appropriate amount of water.

  3. For chickens or ducks, stuff them with stale bread mixed with butter, salt, and black pepper.

  4. If needed, dress veal with good sweet lard and chickens with butter or fat bacon.

Roast

  1. Bake the hind quarter of lamb for about 2 hours, veal for 2.5 hours, shoulder of mutton or duck for 1.5 hours, and tender chicken for 30 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle a little flour on the meats towards the end of cooking for a nice brown finish.

  3. About 10 minutes before the meat is done, stir batter into the baking juices and season with salt and black pepper.

  4. Ensure all meats are well cooked, preferably overdone than underdone.

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. Lamb + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Sprinkled on the meats near the end of cooking to help them brown.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the bread stuffing and chicken dressing.
Stale loaf bread
Forms a moist stuffing that absorbs the juices inside the birds.

The step that matters

Cooking the meats until well done. Large cuts and whole birds need enough time for heat to reach the centre and make them safe to eat. Cooking them thoroughly, as the record advises, also keeps the meat from being tough or underdone.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lamb, chicken, bread, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lamb, chicken, bread, butter, pepper, flour. 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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