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Spiced Shoulder of Mutton

A marinated mutton shoulder stewed with beef broth, neck of beef, vegetables, and herbs, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Shoulder of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Bone the mutton and rub it with sugar mixed with cloves, mace, pepper, and ginger.

  2. The next day, add the salt and keep the mutton turned and rubbed with the mixture for 8 to 10 days.

Roll and stew

  1. Afterward, roll it up tightly and bind it with string.

  2. Stew the mutton gently for 4 hours in beef broth, or with neck of beef, water, onion, carrots, turnips, and herbs.

Serve

  1. When tender, serve with its gravy thickened with lemon pickle or a piquant 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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton shoulder
Forms the main meat, which turns tender during long, gentle stewing.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the meat, drawing out moisture and seasoning it through the long rubbing period.
Sugar
Balances the salt in the cure and adds a mild sweetness to the meat.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that penetrates the meat during curing.
Beef broth
Provides liquid for stewing, adding savoury depth to the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Stew the mutton gently for 4 hours. Low, gentle heat lets the tough connective tissue in the shoulder break down slowly into tender meat. Boiling hard would toughen the muscle fibres and dry the surface, so keep the liquid at a bare simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sugar, clove, pepper, ginger, beef, onion):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sugar, clove, pepper, ginger, beef, onion. 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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