Skip to main content
Main

Mutton

A preserved mutton soaked in wine, vinegar, and spices, then roasted and served with the soaking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mutton

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marinade

  1. Trim the fat from the saddle of mutton and chop off the tail.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the wine, vinegar, carrots, onions, turnips, shallots, cloves, and bay leaves; boil over medium heat.

  3. Pour the mixture over the mutton and let it soak for 5-6 days, turning it frequently.

Roast and serve

  1. Remove the mutton, drain it, cover with buttered paper, and roast for about 3 hours over a clear fire.

  2. Once done, remove the paper, dish up, and pour over the strained soaking liquor mixed with red-currant jelly. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton saddle
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long soaking and slow roasting.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps break down muscle fibres, tenderising the meat during the soak.
Red wine
Adds flavour and acidity to the marinade, penetrating the meat during the long soak.
Red-currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy body to the sauce poured over the roasted meat.
Butter
Covering the meat with buttered paper adds fat that keeps the surface moist during roasting.

The step that matters

Covering the mutton while roasting. The buttered paper shields the surface from direct heat, so the meat cooks through without drying or over-browning. Removing it at the end lets the exterior brown lightly before serving.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, red wine, vinegar, carrot, turnip, shallot, clove):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, red wine, vinegar, carrot, turnip, shallot, clove. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes