Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Shoulder of Mutton

A spiced mutton shoulder stewed for hours with broth, vegetables, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the mutton

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

  2. Add salt to the mutton the next day.

  3. Keep the mutton turned and rubbed with the mixture for 8 to 10 days.

Roll and stew

  1. Roll the mutton tightly and bind it with string.

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

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton 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
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavourful during long gentle stewing.
Sugar
Balances the salt in the cure and adds sweetness that aids browning and flavour.
Salt
Cures the meat, seasoning it deeply and helping it hold moisture during curing.
Beef broth
Forms the stewing liquid, adding savoury depth to the meat and its gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the stewing liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stewing liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing gently for 4 hours. A gentle simmer lets the tough connective tissue in shoulder slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry and stringy.

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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes