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Roast Mutton Ham

A roast mutton ham stuffed with bacon, onion, garlic, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Roast Mutton Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. With a sharp knife, carefully cut the skin to turn it back. Remove the meat.

  2. Remove the bone at the joint.

Make the filling

  1. Grind the meat with a few slices of bacon, one onion, and one garlic clove.

  2. Season the mixture with red pepper, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and sage if preferred. Mix thoroughly.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the mixture back into the skin, pulling the ends over.

  2. Sew the ends with coarse thread.

  3. Cook as an ordinary roast, basting frequently.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Garlic + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the main body of the roast and provides the meat that is ground into the filling.
Bacon
Adds fat that keeps the ground filling moist and flavorful during roasting.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness to the ground filling.

The step that matters

Stuff and sew the skin closed. If the filling is packed loosely or the ends are not sewn tightly, it can open or leak during roasting. Firm stuffing and secure stitching help the roast hold its shape as it cooks.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, garlic, clove, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, garlic, clove, pepper. 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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