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Shoulder of Mutton Roasted

A roasted shoulder of mutton cooked slowly with a flour paste, served with burnt sugar gravy and currant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Shoulder of Mutton Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Wash the shoulder of mutton with warm milk and water or vinegar if necessary.

  2. Wrap the mutton in a paste made of coarse flour.

Roast

  1. Place it far from the fire and allow it to cook slowly.

  2. Remove the paste 35-40 minutes before serving and baste continually.

  3. Bring the mutton closer to the fire before removing the paste and froth it up.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Simmer 1.5 pounds of loin of old mutton in 1 pint of water until reduced by half, seasoning only with salt.

  2. Brown the gravy with a little burnt sugar and serve with currant-jelly 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. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse flour
Forms a paste wrapper that shields the mutton and keeps its juices in during slow cooking.
Burnt sugar
Adds color and a slightly bitter, caramel flavor to the gravy.
Currant-jelly sauce
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, fatty flavor of the mutton.

The step that matters

Removing the paste and frothing the mutton. The paste must come off near the end so the meat can brown and crisp. Bringing the mutton closer to the fire first helps the surface dry and froth. Removing it too early leaves the meat pale and soft.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, sauce, flour, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, sauce, flour, sugar. 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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