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Saddle of Mutton

A braised mutton saddle cooked with carrots, onions, celery, cloves, mace, and stock, finished with a buttered paper crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Saddle of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Remove the spine bone from the saddle of mutton and trim the tail end.

  2. Cut the flaps square and season the inner part with salt and pepper.

  3. Roll up each flap neatly and tie with string several times.

Braise

  1. Prepare for braising with carrots, onions, celery, cloves, and mace.

  2. Moisten with enough stock to cover the mutton.

  3. Cover the mutton with buttered paper and a lid.

  4. Place on moderate heat.

  5. Let it braise or simmer for 4 hours, basting carefully.

  6. Once done, place in the oven to dry on a pan.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with carrots, turnips, cauliflowers, French beans, cucumbers, asparagus heads, small new potatoes, and green peas.

  2. Pour sauce around the mutton.

  3. Serve.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Saddle of mutton
Provides the main cut of meat that becomes tender and juicy during long, slow braising.
Stock
Keeps the meat moist and builds the savoury body of the sauce as it braises.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness, with the buttered paper helping keep the surface moist.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour to the braising liquid and sauce.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and aroma to the braising liquid as they soften and release flavour.

The step that matters

Keeping the braise at a gentle simmer. Long, slow, gentle heat breaks down the connective tissue in mutton into tender meat. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and dries the surface, so keep the liquid barely moving and baste carefully.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, carrot, onion, celery, clove, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, carrot, onion, celery, clove, butter. 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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