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Cold Mutton

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Roast or bake a shoulder of mutton and let it cool.

  2. Slice the cold mutton into thin, even slices.

  3. Place a round cutter in the center of an oval dish and arrange the mutton slices around it, overlapping slightly.

  4. Fill the empty spaces with finely chopped hard-boiled egg whites and yolks, keeping them separate.

  5. Create a border of chopped yolk around the meat, then a border of chopped white, and finally a border of chopped parsley.

  6. Remove the cutter and place a rose or small bunch of violets in the center.

  7. Garnish each heap of yolk with a caper and add capers around the white egg border.

  8. Serve with a sauce made by mixing mustard, pepper, salt, vinegar, and oil in a bowl.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, egg, parsley, capers, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, egg, parsley, capers, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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