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To Dress Haunch of Mutton

A haunch of mutton is coated in a coarse flour paste, cooked, and served with a gravy of reduced mutton loin and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

To Dress Haunch of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haunch

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

  2. Prepare a paste of coarse flour and wrap the haunch in it, placing it on strong paper.

Roast

  1. Set the haunch at a distance from the fire and allow time for the paste to cook.

  2. Bring the haunch closer to the fire before removing the paste and froth it up like venison.

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

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Simmer the loin of 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 it with the haunch.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  4. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haunch of mutton
Is the main cut of meat, providing the bulk and flavour of the dish.
Coarse flour
Forms a protective paste around the haunch that keeps the meat moist during cooking.
Loin of old mutton
Simmered in water to make a savoury stock for the gravy.
Burnt sugar
Adds colour and a slightly bitter, caramel flavour to the gravy.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balances the rich mutton.

The step that matters

Removing the paste and basting. Timing the paste removal 35-40 minutes before serving lets the surface brown and crisp, while continual basting keeps the exposed meat from drying out.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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