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Boiled Neck of Mutton

A boiled mutton neck simmered with water, clove, pepper, salt, onion, and barley to thicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Boiled Neck of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat, gristle, and skin from the neck of mutton.

Cook

  1. Place the meat in a stewpan with water, clove, pepper, salt, and onion.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim the surface.

  3. Reduce heat and let it simmer slowly until the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the broth with a little patent barley, remove the bones, and serve with 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + barleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Clove + barleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Patent barley
Starch that thickens the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface after boiling. Foam and fat that rise at the start of cooking can cloud the broth and give it an unclean taste. Skimming keeps the broth clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, pepper, barley. 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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