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To Dress a Loin of Mittton Like Venison

A braised mutton loin cooked with port wine, vinegar, onion, thyme, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Dress a Loin of Mittton Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. Place the mutton in a stewpan or braising pan.

  2. Add water, onion, port wine, and vinegar.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Add thyme, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  5. Reduce heat and let it stew for 3 hours, turning it often.

Finish

  1. Make gravy from the bones.

  2. Add the gravy to the mutton as needed.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, slow stewing in liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the braising liquid and gravy.
Vinegar
Adds a little acidity that brightens the rich, sweet braising liquid.
Onion
Releases savoury sweetness and aroma into the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and let it stew for 3 hours. Once the liquid boils, the heat must drop to a gentle simmer. Fast boiling toughens the meat and can evaporate the liquid too quickly, while slow stewing breaks down connective tissue into tender, moist meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, port wine, vinegar, thyme, parsley, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, port wine, vinegar, thyme, parsley, pepper. 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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