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Oxford John

A mutton stew with butter, flour, stock, ham, herbs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oxford John

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat into rounds about 3 inches in diameter.

  2. Season the meat well with salt and pepper.

  3. Mix the ham, parsley, shallot, herbs, and a little salt and pepper together and spread the mixture on one side of the meat.

  4. Stack the pieces on top of each other.

  5. Let them rest for at least 1 hour.

  6. Separate the pieces.

Make the gravy and finish

  1. Fry quickly in hot butter.

  2. Remove the meat and keep it warm.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour, ensuring it is completely moistened by the butter.

  4. Brown the flour well.

  5. Add the stock and stir until boiling.

  6. Season to taste.

  7. Add the lemon juice.

  8. Return the meat to the pan.

  9. Let the stewpan stand for 10 to 15 minutes, keeping the contents just below simmering point.

  10. Serve.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose fibres become tender during the gentle standing in the sauce.
Butter
Fries the meat quickly and carries the flour, adding richness and browning.
Flour
Browned in the butter, it thickens the stock into a gravy.
Gravy or stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the meat finishes in.
Ham or bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the stuffing spread on the meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the flour well. Flour cooked in butter until nutty develops flavour and colour and removes its raw starchy taste. Stopping early leaves the gravy pale and floury, while going too far gives a bitter, burnt taste.

“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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