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Spiced Shoulder of Mutton

A shoulder of mutton marinated with sugar, cloves, pepper, mace, ginger, and salt, then stewed with broth, vegetables, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Shoulder of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the boned mutton with sugar, cloves, pepper, mace, and ginger.

  2. Add salt the next day and keep the mutton turned, rubbing it with the pickle for 8 to 10 days.

Cook and serve

  1. Roll the mutton tightly and bind it with string.

  2. Stew it gently for 4 hours in beef broth, or with neck of beef, water, onion, carrots, turnips, and herbs.

  3. Serve with its own gravy thickened with lemon pickle or a good sauce piquante.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender and moist during slow stewing.
Salt
Draws moisture out and seasons the meat during the curing period.
Coarse sugar
Balances the spices and adds a touch of sweetness to the cure.
Beef broth
Gives the stewing liquid savory depth and forms the base of the gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the stewing liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Stew it gently. Gentle, low heat over four hours breaks down the connective tissue in mutton shoulder, making it tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and dries the fibres.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sugar, clove, pepper, ginger, beef, onion):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sugar, clove, pepper, ginger, beef, onion. 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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