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Devilled Bones

A dish of browned mutton bones simmered in a mustard and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Devilled Bones

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bones

  1. Chop the bones into neat pieces and sprinkle with pepper.

  2. Grill or fry the bones until well browned.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until lightly browned.

  2. Add the water and all remaining ingredients to the pan.

  3. Boil for two minutes, then pour the sauce over the bones and serve immediately.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

What each ingredient does

Mutton bones
Provide the meat that is browned and served with the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the sauce and enriches its texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness.
Yorkshire relish
Adds savoury, tangy depth that gives the sauce its character.

The step that matters

Lightly brown the flour in the butter. Cooking flour in fat until lightly browned develops a nutty flavour and colour and cooks out raw starch taste. Browning too far scorches it, and adding liquid before the roux is ready leaves lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, pepper, vinegar, sugar. 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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