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Cold Mutton

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Saffron and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 538 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cover the mutton with cold water and let it simmer until the water is absorbed.

  2. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, and grated Parmesan cheese.

  3. Moisten with more hot water if needed and stir to mix well.

  4. Optionally, add tomato sauce or steep saffron in hot water and strain it into the rice.

  5. If using, work in 1-2 eggs a few minutes before serving.

  6. If available, use Bechamel or rich white sauce instead of stock to moisten the veal.

  7. At serving time, mix in the beaten yolks with lemon juice.

  8. Fry thin slices of bacon and roll them up to garnish the dish, along with sippets of bread.

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. Saffron + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Tomato + saffrontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Pepper + saffrontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, parmesan cheese, sauce, saffron, egg, lemon):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parmesan cheese, sauce, saffron, egg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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