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Mutton, Essence of

A liquid made by simmering shredded mutton in water, then straining and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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, Essence of

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat from the mutton and shred the meat finely.

  2. Place the shredded mutton in a jar with the cold water and cover it tightly.

Cook and strain

  1. Put the jar in a saucepan of boiling water or a cool oven and cook gently for at least 2 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and press all the liquid from the meat.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the savoury meaty flavour and collagen that turns to gelatin, giving the stock body.
Cold water
Acts as the extraction liquid, drawing flavour and gelatin out of the shredded meat during slow cooking.

The step that matters

Cook gently for at least 2 hours. Gentle heat, with the jar tightly covered, slowly draws flavour and gelatin from the meat. Vigorous boiling can cloud the stock and make it greasy, and a cover stops the liquid from evaporating.

“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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