Name: A Delicate Receipt for Roast Mutton
Ingredients: 1 joint of mutton; cold water; flour; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Mutton and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,695 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓

A Delicate Receipt for Roast Mutton

Ingredients

1 joint of mutton
cold water
flour
coarse sea salt

Directions

Simmer the joint

Place the joint in a saucepan and cover it with cold water.
Bring the water to a boil and cook for 30 minutes.

Roast and finish

Prepare the spit and fire.
Remove the meat from the saucepan and place it on the spit to roast.
Baste the meat well.
Dredge the meat with flour.
Sprinkle the meat with coarse sea salt.

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.

Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,695 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton: Provides the main meat, whose fat and juices flavour and moisten the roast.
Flour: Forms a dry coating that helps the surface brown and crisp.

“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.