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Spring, Boiled Mutton. Caper Sauce.

A boiled mutton dish served with a butter, caper, and lemon juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring, Boiled Mutton. Caper Sauce.

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the mutton

  1. Place the mutton in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Add salt and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours until tender.

Make the caper sauce

  1. For the caper sauce, melt butter in a small pan.

  2. Add capers and lemon juice, stirring to combine.

Serve

  1. Serve the boiled mutton with caper 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. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Mutton + caperstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Long, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender.
Butter
Melted butter forms the rich, smooth base of the sauce and carries the flavours.
Capers
Their briny, sharp flavour gives the sauce its distinctive savoury tang.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the salty capers.

The step that matters

Simmering the mutton. Simmering rather than boiling keeps the heat gentle so the meat cooks evenly and stays tender instead of tightening and turning tough. Connective tissue needs sustained low heat to soften fully, so cooking must continue until the meat is truly tender.

“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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