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To Roast Mutton

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with salt, served with currant jelly and mashed turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and chestnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 46 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Roast Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Trim off any inedible parts of the mutton and wash the meat well.

  3. Remove the skin and skewer it back on, or tie soaked paper over the fat to prevent burning.

  4. Place a little salt and water in the dripping pan to baste the meat initially.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the mutton for 2 to 2.5 hours, depending on its size.

  2. A quarter hour before it's done, remove the skin or paper, dredge lightly with flour, and baste with butter.

  3. Skim the gravy and serve it in a boat.

  4. Serve with currant jelly and mashed turnips.

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 + chestnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy through long roasting.
Flour
Dusted on the surface to help form a light, browned crust.
Butter
Basting fat that adds richness and promotes browning on the surface.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich, savoury meat.

The step that matters

Removing the skin or paper a quarter hour before the end. Leaving the protective layer on too long keeps the surface from browning, while removing it too early lets the fat burn or dry the meat. Timing it near the end allows a crisp, golden crust to form before the meat is done.

Swap the chestnut

The recipe marks chestnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, butter, currant, turnip, oyster, meat):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Peasfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, butter, currant, turnip, oyster, meat. 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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