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Neck of Mutton with Parsley

Roasted mutton neck seasoned with parsley, lard, salt, pepper, and shallot gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Neck of Mutton with Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Trim the mutton and lift the skin underneath.

  2. Lard the mutton with sprigs of fresh parsley.

Roast

  1. Roast the mutton on a spit until the parsley is well dried.

  2. Baste the meat with hog's lard from time to time until done.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Prepare a gravy by tossing shallots with salt and pepper.

  2. Serve the gravy with the roasted mutton.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + shallottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 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

Mutton
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is roasted and served.
Fresh parsley
Inserted into the meat as sprigs, where it dries and flavours the mutton as it roasts.
Hog's lard
Basted over the meat during roasting to add fat, moisture and browning to the surface.
Shallots
Tossed with salt and pepper to make the gravy, adding mild sweetness and aroma.

The step that matters

Roast until the parsley is well dried. Roasting slowly on a spit while basting with lard lets the parsley dry and the surface brown, while the meat cooks through; stopping early leaves the parsley damp and the meat underdone.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, 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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