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Roast Saddle of Mutton

Roast saddle of mutton is a whole saddle roasted with flour dusting and basting in water or broth.

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 ↓

Roast Saddle 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

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

  2. If the butcher has not already done so, carefully remove the skin from the saddle of mutton and skewer it back on.

Roast

  1. Roast the mutton, basting it regularly with water or broth.

  2. Half an hour before the mutton is done, remove the skin and lightly dust the joint with flour.

  3. Ensure the joint is kept at a distance from the fire to prevent burning the fat.

  4. Continue roasting for 2 to 2.5 hours, depending on the size.

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

Saddle of mutton
The main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts slowly.
Flour
Dusted on the bare joint, it helps the surface brown and form a crisp crust.
Water or broth
Basting adds moisture to the surface, helping keep the meat from drying out.

The step that matters

Dust with flour and keep the joint away from the fire. Half an hour before the end, the skin comes off and the bare joint is dusted with flour. Flour browns quickly, and fat can scorch near a hot fire, so keep the joint at a distance.

“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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