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Roast Mutton

Roast mutton with gravy thickened with browned flour, served with currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,077 recipes. The science ↓

Roast Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the mutton well and dry it with a cloth.

  2. Place the mutton in a roasting pan with a little water.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 12 minutes per pound.

  2. Baste with a mixture of salt and water, then with the drippings.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with browned flour and serve with currants.

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 + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  2. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. 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
Is the main cut of meat, cooked by roasting until done.
Browned flour
Thickens the drippings into a gravy.
Currants
Adds sweetness and a fruity contrast to the rich meat.

The step that matters

Basting with the drippings. Spooning the pan juices over the meat during roasting keeps the surface moist and helps it brown, so the outside does not dry out before the inside is cooked through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour. 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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