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Braised Mutton

A boned mutton shoulder stuffed with a suet and bread crumb mixture, rolled, braised, and served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braised Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Chop the suet finely and mix it with the bread crumbs, lemon rind, parsley, and herbs.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the egg and milk.

  3. Stuff the mutton with the mixture, roll it up, and tie securely with kitchen twine.

Braise

  1. Place sliced vegetables in a braising pan, add stock or water, the mutton bones, and a bunch of herbs.

  2. Boil slowly for 1.5 hours.

Glaze, bake and serve

  1. Remove the mutton, brush it with glaze, and bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Make gravy from the stock, adding a little mushroom ketchup if desired.

  3. Serve the mutton with currant jelly.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton shoulder
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow moist cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and fat, giving the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape when rolled and sliced.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 1.5 hours. Gentle, steady simmering breaks down the tough connective tissue in the shoulder without toughening the meat. A hard boil can make the meat stringy and dry out the stuffing.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, bread, lemon, parsley, egg, pepper, milk):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, bread, lemon, parsley, egg, pepper, milk. 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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