Skip to main content
Main

Loin of Mutton En Papillote

A roasted mutton loin cooked in parchment with onions, carrot, peppers, cloves, and herbs, basted in oil and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Loin of Mutton En Papillote

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and marinate

  1. Trim the loin of mutton.

  2. Marinate it in salad oil, onions, carrot, whole peppers, cloves, salt, chopped parsley, and dried herbs from morning until roasting time.

  3. Turn the joint several times during the day. Baste it often.

Roast in parchment

  1. Pack the marinated loin and vegetables in well-oiled paper.

  2. Roast carefully, basting with the marinade oil.

  3. Remove the paper. Brush off the vegetables. Baste with melted butter.

Serve

  1. Serve when nicely browned with other cooked vegetables and gravy.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton loin
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during the long marinade and slow roast.
Salad oil
Carries the herbs and aromatics into the meat and helps keep the surface moist while roasting.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the marinade, which flavours the meat as it sits.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown and gain flavour at the end.

The step that matters

Roast carefully, basting with the marinade oil. Frequent basting keeps the surface from drying out and helps it brown evenly, so the meat stays moist inside while the outside develops flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, pepper, clove, parsley, butter. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes