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Mutton En Brochettes

Skewered mutton marinated with onion, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and tomato juice, grilled and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton En Brochettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small, equal-sized pieces.

  2. Rub the pieces with chopped onion, salt, pepper, and cinnamon.

  3. Place the meat on a plate, cover with another plate, and let it marinate for a few hours.

  4. Halve the tomatoes and press them in a mortar to extract the juice, then strain it through a fine sieve.

Grill and serve

  1. Skewer the marinated meat pieces and grill them over a brisk fire, turning often to brown evenly, basting with tomato juice.

  2. Once cooked, arrange on a hot dish and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Cinnamon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which browns and firms as it grills.
Onion
Its juices soften and flavour the meat during the marinating time.
Tomatoes
Their juice adds moisture and acidity to the meat as it grills.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Turning and basting over a brisk fire. A brisk fire browns the outside quickly, while frequent turning keeps the surface from burning before the centre cooks. Basting with tomato juice adds moisture and flavour, and the sugars in it can scorch if the heat is too fierce.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, pepper, tomato. 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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