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Breast of Mutton

A seasoned mutton breast cooked by roasting, boiling, or broiling, served with sauces or stewed cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Rub the breast of mutton with coarse sea salt if the weather is hot.

  2. Cut off excess fat from the mutton.

  3. Bone the mutton.

  4. Remove excess fat from the mutton.

  5. Remove bones from the mutton.

  6. Cut off fat from the mutton.

  7. Flatten the breast of mutton.

Stuff and season

  1. Cover the mutton with bread crumbs, herbs, and seasoning.

  2. Roll the mutton.

  3. Season the mutton with pepper and salt.

  4. Brush the mutton with yolk of an egg.

  5. Sprinkle minced parsley and green onions mixed with bread crumbs over the mutton.

Cook and serve

  1. Roast the mutton.

  2. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the mutton while it is roasting.

  3. Baste the mutton with butter.

  4. Broil the mutton in a Dutch oven.

  5. Boil the mutton until tender.

  6. Half boil the mutton.

  7. Stew the mutton with vegetables and a little curry powder.

  8. Serve the mutton with stewed cucumbers.

  9. Serve the boiled mutton with tomato sauce or sorrel.

  10. Serve the mutton with stewed cucumber or sauce Robert.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavor and texture of the meat.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat, adding body to the stuffing and a light crisp coating.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and promotes browning and a glossy surface on the meat.
Yolk of an egg
Adds richness and helps the crumb coating bind and brown.

The step that matters

Half boil the mutton. Partly boiling before finishing tenderizes the meat and sets its shape while it is rolled. Boiling it fully too early can make the meat fall apart and dry out during later cooking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, bread, pepper, butter, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, bread, pepper, butter, egg. 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.

More mutton breast recipes

Stuffed 9Boiled 7Collared 6Grilled 6Roasted 6Roast 5 See all 4 →

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