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Breast of Mutton

A roasted or grilled mutton breast served with stewed cucumbers, parsley, or caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Trim excess fat from the breast of mutton.

  2. Roast the meat.

Finish and serve

  1. Serve with stewed cucumbers or cold with chopped parsley.

  2. Half-boil the meat.

  3. Grill it, covering with bread crumbs and herbs.

  4. Serve with caper 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. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cucumber + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Main meat; its fat renders during roasting and its protein sets, giving the dish its body.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust when grilled, adding texture to the meat.
Cucumbers
Stewed, they contribute moisture and a mild, fresh flavour alongside the rich meat.
Herbs
Add aroma that complements the savoury crust.
Chopped parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light, clean note to the rich meat.

The step that matters

Half-boil the meat. Partly cooking the meat before grilling lets the grill mainly brown the crumb crust, while the interior finishes without drying out. Boiling too long leaves the meat waterlogged and less flavourful, and skipping it can leave the centre underdone.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, bread, sauce. 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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