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Mutton and Lamb

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with pepper, salt, and flour, basted with its own fat and served with boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton and Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills from the mutton and wipe it dry.

  2. Dredge the meat with pepper to keep flies away.

  3. Flour the meat after washing and before roasting.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the mutton at a distance from the fire for four hours.

  2. Baste constantly with its own fat.

  3. Sprinkle lightly with salt and ladle boiling water over before serving.

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

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

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
The main meat; its own fat keeps the surface moist while it roasts.
Flour
Forms a coating that helps the outside brown and crisp during roasting.
Boiling water
Ladled over just before serving, adding moisture to the surface.

The step that matters

Roast at a distance from the fire for four hours. Long, gentle heat lets the tough connective tissue in mutton break down and become tender, while keeping the outside from scorching or drying out before the centre is cooked through.

“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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