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To Boil Neck of Mutton with Parsley Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Boil Neck of Mutton with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Trim the fat from the neck of mutton and shape the joint.

  2. Place the mutton in a saucepan with carrots, turnips, and enough water to cover.

  3. Add coarse sea salt and boil slowly for 20 minutes per pound.

  4. Optionally, add rice or pearl barley.

  5. Serve the meat with vegetables and pour parsley sauce over it.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Celeryfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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