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To Dress Haunch of Mutton

A method for cooking a haunch of mutton with a flour paste, simmered gravy, and currant-jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

To Dress Haunch of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haunch

  1. Wash the haunch with warm milk and water or vinegar if necessary.

  2. Prepare a paste of coarse flour and wrap the haunch in it using strong paper.

Roast

  1. Place the wrapped haunch far from the fire and cook for a proportional time.

  2. Remove the paste 35-40 minutes before serving and baste the haunch continuously.

  3. Bring the haunch closer to the fire before removing the paste and froth it up as you would venison.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Simmer 1.5 pounds of loin of old mutton in 2 cups of water until reduced by half, seasoning only with salt.

  2. Brown the gravy with a little burnt sugar and serve it with the haunch and currant-jelly sauce.

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. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Haunch of mutton
Is the main cut of meat that the whole dish is built around.
Coarse flour
Forms a paste that encloses the haunch, protecting it from drying during long cooking.
Burnt sugar
Adds colour and a caramel flavour to the gravy.
Vinegar
Acidity used to cleanse the meat when washing, if needed.

The step that matters

Remove the paste and froth the haunch. The paste must be removed near the end and the haunch brought closer to the fire, so the surface can brown and crisp. Basting throughout keeps the exposed meat moist while it browns.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, milk, vinegar, sugar, sauce. 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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