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Neck of Mutton with a Parte of Turnips

A braised mutton neck served with boiled turnips in béchamel sauce, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Neck of Mutton with a Parte of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the mutton

  1. Braise the neck of mutton in a white braise until tender.

Prepare the turnips

  1. Boil the turnips in the braise until done.

  2. Drain the turnips and squeeze them dry.

  3. Pass the turnips through a tammy into a saucepan.

  4. Add a little béchamel sauce and heat while stirring until hot.

  5. Season with pepper and salt, then arrange around the dish.

Plate and serve

  1. Remove the mutton, dry it with a cloth, and place it on the dish.

  2. Pour a little béchamel sauce over the mutton and garnish with carrot.

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. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Slow braising in liquid turns its tough connective tissue tender and moist.
Turnips
Boiling and then passing them through a tammy gives a smooth, soft purée.
Béchamel sauce
Its starch and milk fat thicken and enrich the turnip purée and coat the mutton.

The step that matters

Drying the turnips before passing them through a tammy. Excess water thins the purée and makes it loose, so squeezing the turnips dry before puréeing helps it hold its body when reheated with béchamel.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sauce, pepper. 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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