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To Dress a Haunch of Mutton

A haunch of mutton is dressed with currant jelly, red wine, sugar, and vinegar sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Red wine and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 575 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

To Dress a Haunch of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the haunch of mutton for two weeks.

  2. Prepare sauce by warming currant jelly.

Make the sauces

  1. For red wine sauce, simmer red wine and sugar over medium heat for 5-6 minutes.

  2. For vinegar sauce, simmer vinegar and sugar until it thickens to a syrup.

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. Red wine + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Currant + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Currant + red winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Mutton + red winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton haunch
Its long hanging is the stated preparation; the meat is the main component of the dish.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang, and thickens the sauce as it warms.
Red wine
Provides acidity and depth of flavour to the red wine sauce as it reduces.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauces thicken to a syrupy consistency as they simmer.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the sweetness in the vinegar sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the vinegar and sugar to a syrup. Sugar and vinegar thicken only as water evaporates and the mixture concentrates. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while cooking too long makes it sticky and overly sharp.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, red wine, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, red wine, sugar, vinegar. 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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