Name: Boiled Necks of Mutton, a L’anglaise
Ingredients: 2 necks of mutton; water; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2-3 carrots; 2-3 turnips; gravy; caper sauce

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Necks of Mutton, a L’anglaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the necks

Saw off the scrag of the necks and shorten the rib-bones to 4 inches.
Detach the spine-bone from the neck and saw off the remaining spine.
Pare the fat smooth and place the necks in a stewpan with water, salt, carrots, and turnips.

Boil and dish

Boil for about 2 hours until done.
Dish the necks so the uncovered ends of the rib-bones fall between each other.
Garnish with mashed turnips and turned carrots around the dish.

Serve

Serve with gravy and caper sauce.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,878 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,558 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together943 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Carrot + saucetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,509 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton necks: Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful through long gentle boiling.
Carrots: Add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid and serve as a garnish.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid and are mashed as a garnish.
Caper sauce: Adds acidity and sharpness that cut through the richness of the mutton.

The step that matters

Boil for about 2 hours until done. Boiling gently rather than rapidly keeps the meat from toughening and breaking apart, while long cooking breaks down connective tissue so the neck becomes tender.

Swap the carrot

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

Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits about as well
Carrotthe original

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

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Haricot Mutton59 recipes

Mutton Soup56 recipes

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Boiled Necks of Mutton, a L’anglaise