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To Dress a Haunch of Mutton

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

To Dress a Haunch of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the haunch of mutton with warm milk and water or vinegar if necessary.

  2. Prepare a paste of coarse flour on strong paper and wrap the haunch in it.

  3. Place the wrapped haunch far from the fire and allow it to cook for a proportional time.

  4. Remove the paste about 30 minutes before serving and baste the haunch continually.

  5. Move the haunch closer to the fire before removing the paste.

  6. Serve with currant jelly in a boat and a little gravy in the dish.

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. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Mutton + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together814 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Mutton + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, milk, vinegar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, milk, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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