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Boiled Mutton with Caper Sauce

A boiled leg of mutton served with a butter, flour, water, and caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Wash the leg of mutton and wipe it dry.

  2. Place the mutton in boiling water, skim well, and season with salt.

Boil the mutton

  1. Boil slowly for 2 hours.

Make the caper sauce

  1. Work the butter and flour together in a saucepan with a little salt, then stir in the water smoothly.

  2. Add the capers and let the sauce simmer.

  3. Serve the sauce in a sauceboat.

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 + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Capers + muttontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Butter and flour 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

Leg of mutton
Is the main cooked meat, becoming tender through slow boiling.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and combines with flour to thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and water.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts the richness of the mutton and butter.

The step that matters

Stir the water into the butter and flour smoothly. Adding liquid to a butter and flour mixture without stirring evenly can leave lumps, because flour clumps unless it is fully dispersed before thickening. Stirring steadily as the water goes in keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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