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To Dress Haunch of Mutton

A haunch of mutton dressed with butter, salt, flour, and served with a burnt sugar gravy and currant-jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Haunch of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haunch

  1. Wash the haunch with warm milk and water or vinegar.

  2. Make a paste of coarse flour and wrap the haunch in it.

Roast and baste

  1. Set the haunch on a cradle-spit at a distance from the fire.

  2. Baste the haunch continually for 35-40 minutes before serving.

  3. Bring the haunch closer to the fire before removing the paste.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Simmer 1.5 pounds of loin of mutton in 2 cups of water until reduced by half.

  2. Brown the gravy with a little burnt sugar and serve it with the haunch.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haunch of mutton
Is the main joint of meat, cooked whole and carrying the dish's flavour.
Coarse flour
Forms a protective paste that shields the meat from drying and burning during roasting.
Burnt sugar
Adds colour and a bittersweet caramel flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Bring the haunch closer to the fire before removing the paste.. Moving the joint nearer the heat after its protective flour paste has done its work lets the surface brown and crisp. Removing the paste too early exposes the meat to fierce heat and can dry or scorch it.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, sugar, 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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