Name: Mutton Steaks
Ingredients: leg of mutton; pepper; coarse sea salt; butter

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 Steaks

Ingredients

leg of mutton
pepper
coarse sea salt
butter

Directions

Prepare the mutton

Hang a leg of mutton in a cold place until it freezes.
Cut slices from the thick part of the mutton.
Pound the slices and place them on a grill over a clear fire.

Cook and serve

Broil the mutton quickly until done.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Baste well with butter and serve hot.

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.

Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton: Provides the meat that is sliced, pounded and broiled into steaks.
Butter: Adds fat and richness when basted over the hot steaks.

“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.