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Roast Neck of Mutton

A roasted neck of mutton seasoned with coarse sea salt, served with optional tomatoes, gravy, or red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and red currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Roast Neck 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. Ask the butcher to chop off the chine bone and cut the long bones at the joints.

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

  3. Season the neck of mutton with coarse sea salt.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the mutton for 1 to 1.25 hours, starting at a distance until heated through, then move closer to the heat.

  2. Serve with baked or roasted tomatoes, plain gravy, or red currant jelly 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. Tomato + red curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Mutton + tomatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + red curranttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose connective tissue softens into tender, juicy meat during slow roasting.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat surface and helps build a savoury, flavourful crust.

The step that matters

Moving the mutton closer to the heat. Starting at a distance lets the meat heat through gently, so the interior cooks evenly. Moving it closer afterwards browns the outside. Doing this too early can scorch the exterior before the centre is done.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, red currant):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, red currant. 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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