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Mutton, Neck Of, Braised

A braised mutton neck cooked with consommé, carrots, onions, turnips, celery, parsley, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton, Neck Of, Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and cut off excess fat from the neck of mutton.

  2. Place the mutton in a braising pan or stewpan.

Braise

  1. Add consommé, sliced carrots, onions, turnips, celery, parsley, and peppercorns.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let it simmer for about 1.5 hours.

  3. Baste frequently with the cooking liquid and brown the meat nicely.

Serve

  1. Serve with the vegetables and add salt to taste.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Consommé
Supplies the liquid that braises the meat and carries flavour into the vegetables.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the braising liquid as they soften.
Onions
Break down during simmering, adding sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Turnips
Soften during braising, adding mild sweetness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Baste frequently and brown the meat nicely. Basting keeps the surface moist while the liquid simmers, and browning builds roasted, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Skipping it can leave the meat pale and flat in taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley. 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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