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Muttok Like Venison

A mutton joint cured with vinegar, herbs, and spices, then roasted or stewed, served with venison sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Muttok Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the mutton joint for as long as safely possible.

  2. Skin the joint and place it in a pan with vinegar and water (2 parts vinegar to 1 part water).

  3. Add herbs, garlic, peppercorns, and sliced onions.

  4. Let it soak for three days.

  5. Dry the mutton well and hang it for one more day.

Cook and serve

  1. Roast the mutton as you would venison.

  2. Alternatively, place it in a stewpan with gravy and simmer for four hours.

  3. Serve with venison sauce.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Its long hanging and soaking tenderise the dense meat and mellow its strong flavour.
Vinegar
Acidity in the soaking liquid helps break down tough muscle fibres and adds a tangy note.
Onions
Sliced onions in the soak add aromatic sweetness and flavour to the marinade.
Gravy
Provides liquid and savoury richness when the mutton is simmered in a stewpan.

The step that matters

Soaking the mutton for three days in the vinegar mixture. The acidic soak gradually softens tough connective tissue and carries flavour into the meat. Too short a soak leaves the joint firm and strongly gamey, so the full soaking time matters.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, vinegar, garlic, onion):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, garlic, onion. 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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