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Roasting Meat

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with flour and coarse sea salt, served with optional onion sauce and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32,460 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare

  1. Hang the mutton in a cool, dry place for 4 to 10 days, depending on the weather.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Roast

  1. Roast the mutton for 2 hours, starting 12 inches from the fire for the first 30 minutes.

  2. Move the mutton to 8 inches from the fire for the next hour, then closer for the last 30 minutes.

  3. Dredge the mutton lightly with flour and a little coarse sea salt halfway through cooking and again near the end.

Serve

  1. Make gravy using less water than for sirloin of beef, and prepare vegetables as you would for beef.

  2. Serve with onion sauce if desired.

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. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 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).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Mutton
Forms the main body of the dish, and its fat and connective tissue flavour the meat as it roasts.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the outside brown and form a light crust.
Water
Used in the gravy, where it dilutes the meat juices to set the gravy's body.

The step that matters

Moving the mutton away from the fire. Starting far from the heat and only gradually moving closer lets the thick joint cook through to the centre before the outside over-browns or dries. Rushing closer to the fire risks a charred exterior with a raw middle.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, 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.

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