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Shoulder of Mutton

A roasted shoulder of mutton stuffed with bread crumbs, salt pork, pepper, salt, and sage or sweet marjoram.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Shoulder of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stuff

  1. Remove the bone from the shoulder of mutton.

  2. Fill the space with a stuffing made of bread crumbs, salt pork, pepper, salt, and sage or marjoram.

Roast

  1. Roast in a good fire for 1.5 hours.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton shoulder
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during long roasting.
Bread crumbs
Soak up meat juices in the stuffing, keeping the filling moist and light.
Salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the stuffing and lends savory richness.
Sage or sweet marjoram
Contributes a herbal aroma that complements the mutton.

The step that matters

Roast in a good fire for 1.5 hours. The roast needs steady, strong heat over the full time so the thick meat cooks through and the stuffing is heated fully. Too little heat leaves the centre undercooked, while excessive heat dries the outside before the middle is done.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, bread, pork, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Sagethe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, bread, pork, pepper. 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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