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Boiled Necks of Mutton, a iZaNGLAISE

A boiled mutton neck dish with carrots, turnips, gravy, and caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Necks of Mutton, a iZaNGLAISE

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Saw off the scrap of the necks and shorten the rib-bones to 4 inches.

  2. Detach the spine bone from the neck and saw off the remaining spine adhering to the ribs.

Boil

  1. Pare the fat smooth and boil the necks in a stewpan with water, salt, carrots, and turnips for about 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Dish the necks so the uncovered ends of the rib-bones fall between each other.

  2. Garnish with mashed turnips and turned carrots, and serve with gravy and caper sauce.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Carrot + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton necks
Main meat; long slow cooking softens connective tissue into tender, moist meat.
Carrots
Add mild sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid and the finished dish.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the cooking liquid and the mashed garnish.

The step that matters

Boiling the necks. The necks need a long, steady cook to break down connective tissue and gelatin so the meat becomes tender. A rapid, violent boil can toughen and break up the meat, so the liquid should stay at a gentle simmer.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, sauce):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, sauce. 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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