Skip to main content
Main

Necks of Mutton

Braised mutton necks with aromatic vegetables, sherry, stock, and Poivrade sauce, served with fried potato olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Necks of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the necks of mutton and lard them closely.

  2. Marinate the necks in a cold marinade for at least 24 hours.

  3. Place the necks in a braising pan with a drainer.

  4. Garnish with carrot, onion, celery, parsley, cloves, and mace.

Braise

  1. Moisten with sherry or Madeira and stock.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and boil on the stove.

  3. Put the lid on and braise gently for about 2 hours, basting frequently.

Glaze and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking dish with some broth and dry in the oven for a few minutes.

  2. Glaze and serve with fried potatoes shaped like olives.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 necks
Provide the meat that becomes tender and rich during long, slow braising.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and aroma that flavour the braising liquid and the finished sauce.
Stock
Supplies moisture for the braise and gives the cooking liquid savoury depth.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the buttered paper cover and the braise.
Carrot, onion, and celery
Aromatic vegetables that release flavour into the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Braise gently with the lid on. Gentle heat over a long time breaks down the connective tissue in the necks; boiling hard toughens the meat and dries out the liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, clove):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, clove. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes