Why it works: Mutton and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,695 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓
Loin of Mutton
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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Sprinkle the loin of mutton with coarse sea salt and dredge it with flour about 30 minutes before roasting.
Roast
Roast the mutton for 1.5 to 1.75 hours, ensuring the fire is high enough to cook the ends properly.
Make the gravy
For the gravy, use the drippings and add ½ cup of boiling water.
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.
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Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,695 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Loin of mutton
- Is the main cut of meat, cooked by dry roasting to become tender and browned on the outside.
- Flour
- Dredged onto the surface, it helps the outside brown and gives the drippings body for the gravy.
- Boiling water
- Loosens the roasting drippings into a thin, flavourful liquid for the gravy.
The step that matters
Roast with enough heat to cook the ends. A loin is thick in the middle and thinner at the ends, so the ends cook faster. If the heat is too low, the thick centre stays underdone while the thin ends overcook, so the whole cut must get steady, sufficient heat for the full roasting time.
“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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