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Roast Saddle of Mutton

A roasted saddle of mutton, seasoned with sea salt and flour, basted with butter or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Saddle of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. If the butcher has not done so, remove the skin from the saddle of mutton and skewer it back on.

Roast

  1. Place the mutton in the oven and roast, basting frequently with butter or oil.

  2. About 30 minutes before the mutton is done, remove the skin and lightly dust the joint with flour.

  3. Continue roasting and basting until the meat is cooked to your desired doneness, approximately 1.5 to 2 hours.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Saddle of mutton
Is the main cut of meat, cooked whole so it stays juicy inside while the outside browns.
Flour
Dusted on the joint late in roasting to help the surface brown and form a crust.
Butter or oil
Basted over the meat to add moisture and fat, helping keep the surface from drying out.

The step that matters

Removing the skin and dusting with flour about 30 minutes before done. Timing matters: removing the skin late lets the fat-rich surface brown, and flour dusted onto the exposed meat browns and crisps. Doing it too early can dry the joint, and too late leaves the crust pale.

“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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