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Roasting Meat

Roasting a leg of pork or lamb, neck of mutton, or chine of pork, seasoned with coarse sea salt and flour, using dripping or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,239 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Roasting Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the meat at a good distance from the fire.

  3. Gradually move the meat closer as it heats up.

  4. Baste the meat frequently to keep it moist.

  5. Dust the meat with flour when nearly done to create a frothy appearance.

  6. If the meat is not fatty enough, use good dripping instead of butter.

  7. Sprinkle coarse sea salt on the meat only when it is almost done.

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. Pork + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork or lamb
Forms the main body of the roast, providing the meat that cooks and browns.
Neck of mutton
Adds a second cut of meat to the roast, contributing flavour and juiciness through its fat and connective tissue.
Chine of pork
Adds another cut of meat whose fat helps keep the roast moist as it cooks.
Flour
Dusted on near the end, it helps create a frothy, golden surface on the meat.
Good dripping or butter
Fat that bastes the meat, conducting heat and promoting browning while keeping the surface moist.

The step that matters

Basting the meat frequently. Basting spreads fat over the surface, which keeps it from drying out and helps it brown evenly. Skipping it lets the outer layers dry and toughen before the interior is cooked.

“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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