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Neck of Mutton

A roasted neck of mutton cooked slowly with vegetables, basted, and dredged with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Neck of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress the neck of mutton slowly for about an hour.

  2. Prepare vegetables as you would for loin.

Roast

  1. Hang the mutton a foot from the fire initially, then gradually move it closer.

  2. Baste the mutton well to achieve a rich brown color without burning.

  3. Baste every 10 to 15 minutes to keep the surface tender.

  4. Skewer a piece of well-greased writing paper over the mutton to retain moisture.

  5. After one hour, lightly dredge the mutton with flour.

  6. Dredge again when turning the mutton and once more half an hour before it is done.

  7. If using salt, add a small amount only during the last dredging.

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. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Neck of mutton
Main cut of meat that becomes tender and juicy through slow roasting.
Flour
Dredging coats the surface, helping it brown and form a crisp crust.

The step that matters

Basting without burning. Basting spreads fat and juices over the surface, promoting even browning. Too close to the fire, though, the sugars and proteins can scorch before the meat is cooked through, so the distance is raised gradually.

“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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