Skip to main content
Main

Mutton with Vinaigrette Sauce

Cold slices of cooked mutton served with a vinaigrette made from salad oil, vinegar, herbs, and seasonings.

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

Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton with Vinaigrette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vinaigrette

  1. Mix the salad oil, vinegar, chopped gherkin, parsley, shallot, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the mutton slices neatly on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the vinaigrette sauce over the mutton and let it sit for at least 1 hour.

  3. Garnish with sliced gherkins, capers, and small tufts of salad.

  4. Serve the remaining salad separately.

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. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked mutton
Forms the main body of the dish, served cold in thin slices.
Salad oil
Carries the flavour of the vinaigrette and keeps the meat moist.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the meat and balances the oil.
Shallot or onion
Contributes a sharp, aromatic bite to the dressing.

The step that matters

Letting the mutton sit in the vinaigrette. The dressing needs time to soak in, since acid and oil only flavour the surface of cold meat quickly. Resting for at least an hour lets the vinegar and seasoning penetrate the slices so the dish tastes seasoned throughout, not just on top.

“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 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes