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Breast of Mutton, Boiled, with Caper Sauce

A boiled mutton breast rolled with breadcrumbs and herbs, served with caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton, Boiled, with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the bones and excess fat from the breast of mutton.

  2. Flatten the meat and season it well with salt and pepper.

  3. In a bowl, mix breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, herbs, and additional salt and pepper. Moisten the mixture with milk and spread it over the meat.

  4. Roll the meat up lightly and secure it with string.

Boil and serve

  1. Bring stock or water to a boil, adding onion, carrot, turnip, and peppercorns if using water.

  2. Add the rolled meat to the boiling liquid and simmer gently for about 2 hours.

  3. Serve the boiled mutton with caper sauce poured over it.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during boiling.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb milk and fat to form a soft stuffing that holds its shape.
Milk
Moistens the breadcrumbs so the stuffing binds and spreads easily.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 2 hours. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue in the mutton break down slowly and keeps the meat tender. A hard rolling boil toughens the proteins and can break up the rolled meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, milk, pepper, sauce, meat, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, milk, pepper, sauce, meat, carrot. 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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