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Boiled Neck of Mutton

A boiled mutton neck served with gravy, seasoned with clove, pepper, salt, onion, and thickened with barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Boiled Neck of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat, gristle, and skin from the mutton.

  2. Place the mutton in a pot with water, clove, pepper, salt, and onion.

Cook

  1. Bring the pot to a boil. Skim the surface of the boiling liquid.

  2. Reduce the heat and let the mixture simmer until the meat is tender.

  3. Thicken the broth with a little patent barley.

Serve

  1. Remove the bones from the meat.

  2. Serve the meat with gravy.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + barleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + barleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Patent barley
Thickens the cooking broth as its starch swells, giving the gravy body.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the broth as it simmers with the meat.

The step that matters

Skim the surface of the boiling liquid. Foam and fat rising during the initial boil can cloud the broth and taste greasy. Skimming early keeps the gravy clear and clean-flavored.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, pepper, barley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, pepper, barley. 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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