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Mutton Like Venison

A preserved mutton joint marinated in vinegar, water, herbs, garlic, pepper, and onions, then roasted or stewed.

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 ↓

Mutton Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Hang and marinate

  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, whole pepper, and sliced onions to the pan.

  4. Let it soak for three days, then dry it well.

Roast or stew

  1. Hang it for one day before roasting it like 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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Mutton
Main meat that becomes tender and gamey after soaking and hanging.
Vinegar
Acid softens the surface of the meat and adds a sharp, tangy flavour.
Gravy
Provides moisture and flavour to the meat while it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour to the soaking liquid.

The step that matters

Drying the joint after the three-day soak. Surface moisture left on the meat steams instead of browning in the oven, so the joint must be dried well before roasting to develop a good crust.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, garlic, pepper, 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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