Skip to main content
Main

Breast of Mutton

A prepared mutton breast cooked by roasting, boiling, or stewing, served with cucumber, tomato sauce, or other accompaniments.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the breast of mutton with a little coarse sea salt if the weather is hot.

  2. Cut off excess fat.

Roast and stuff

  1. Roast the mutton.

  2. Serve with stewed cucumbers.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped parsley while roasting.

  4. Bone the mutton.

  5. Remove excess fat.

  6. Cover with bread, herbs, and seasoning.

  7. Roll the mutton.

Boil and stew

  1. Boil until tender.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce or sorrel.

  3. Stew with vegetables and a little curry powder.

  4. Cut off the fat.

  5. Half boil the mutton.

  6. Remove the bones.

  7. Flatten the breast.

  8. Season with pepper and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Brush with egg yolk.

  2. Sprinkle with minced parsley and green onions mixed with bread crumbs.

  3. Baste with fresh butter.

  4. Broil in a Dutch oven.

  5. Serve with stewed cucumber or sauce Robert.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Main meat; slow cooking softens its fibres and renders fat.
Bread
Binds the stuffing and soaks up the meat's juices.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture and helps the surface brown.
Egg yolk (in the method)
Glaze that helps the surface brown and turn golden.
Curry powder
Adds warm spice aroma to the stewed vegetables.
Parsley
Adds fresh herbal aroma to the stuffing and topping.

The step that matters

Half boil the mutton. Partial boiling softens the meat before the final broil. Boiling too long makes it fall apart when it is boned, flattened, rolled and broiled.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, bread, pepper, butter, onion, tomato):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, bread, pepper, butter, onion, tomato. 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.

More mutton breast recipes

Stuffed 9Boiled 7Collared 6Grilled 6Roasted 6Roast 5 See all 4 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes