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Roast Mutton

Roast mutton is a whole mutton roast cooked in a dripping pan, basted with water, flour, and butter, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the roast well and dry it with a clean cloth.

Roast

  1. Place the roast in a dripping pan and add a little water to baste it initially.

  2. If the fire is very hot, roast for 12 minutes per pound.

  3. If it browns too quickly, cover it with a sheet of white paper.

  4. Baste often, and 15 minutes before it's done, dredge the meat lightly with flour and baste with butter.

Serve

  1. Garnish the dish with parsley.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mutton + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,915 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton roast
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts.
Flour
Dredged over the meat near the end, it helps form a light browned crust.
Butter
Brushed on during basting, it adds fat for richer flavour and browning.

The step that matters

Covering the roast if it browns too quickly. Over high heat the surface can darken before the interior cooks through. A sheet of white paper shields the outside from direct heat, slowing browning while the centre finishes cooking.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, butter. 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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