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Mutton, Breast Of, Broiled, with Caper Sauce

Broiled mutton breast served with caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 ↓

Mutton, Breast Of, Broiled, with Caper Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bones and excess fat from the mutton breast.

  2. Flatten the meat and season it well with salt and pepper.

  3. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, suet, parsley, herbs, and additional salt and pepper. Moisten the mixture with milk and spread it over the meat.

  4. Roll the meat up lightly and bind it securely with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rolled meat into boiling stock or water. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with caper sauce poured over the top.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton breast
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind with the suet to give the stuffing a soft texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and flavourful during cooking.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma to the stuffing.
Caper sauce
Adds sharp acidity that contrasts with the rich, fatty mutton.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. At a hard boil, the meat's muscle fibres tighten and the outside can toughen, while gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue slowly, keeping the meat tender and moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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