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Mutton Dressed Like Venison

Sliced mutton served with butter and currant jelly, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton Dressed Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Freeze the leg of mutton.

  2. Slice the frozen mutton into ¼‑inch thick slices.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the slices in a chafing dish with butter.

  2. Serve with currant jelly, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the main meat, cooked as thin slices in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying the slices, adding richness and browning the surface.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness to balance the rich, savory meat.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, 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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