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Oxford John

A mutton dish simmered in gravy with ham, herbs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oxford John

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat into rounds about 3 inches in diameter and season well with salt and pepper.

  2. Mix the ham, parsley, shallot, herbs, and a little salt and pepper together.

  3. Spread the mixture on one side of the meat and stack the pieces on top of each other.

  4. Let them marinate for at least 1 hour, then separate and fry quickly in hot butter.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the meat and keep it warm, then sprinkle in the flour, adding more if needed to moisten.

  2. Brown the flour well, then add the stock and stir until boiling.

  3. Season to taste, add the lemon juice, and return the meat to the pan.

  4. Let the stewpan sit for 10 to 15 minutes, keeping the contents just below simmering point, then serve.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during gentle cooking.
Butter
Fries the meat quickly and carries flavour into the pan for browning.
Flour
Browns in the butter and thickens the stock into a gravy.
Gravy or stock
Makes the liquid base that the thickened sauce and meat are finished in.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the herb mixture spread on the meat.

The step that matters

Brown the flour well. Cooking the flour in fat until it is well browned develops nutty flavour and colour and removes raw starch taste before the stock is added. Adding stock to pale flour gives a floury, dull gravy.

“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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