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Spiced Shoulder of Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton shoulder marinated with sugar, spices, and herbs, then stewed in beef broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Shoulder of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Bone the shoulder of mutton and rub it with sugar, cloves, mace, pepper, ginger, and salt.

  2. Keep the mutton turned and rubbed with the mixture for 8 to 10 days.

  3. Roll it up tightly and bind it with string.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the mutton gently for 4 hours in beef broth with onion, carrots, turnips, and herbs.

  2. Serve with its own gravy, thickened and flavored with lemon pickle or a good sauce piquante.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton shoulder
Provides the meat that becomes tender and juicy during long, gentle stewing.
Salt
Draws moisture from the meat and helps the cure penetrate and season it.
Sugar
Balances the salt and spices and helps the surface brown and develop flavor.
Beef broth
Gently cooks the meat in liquid and forms the base of the gravy.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the broth and gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing gently for 4 hours. Gentle, sustained heat slowly breaks down connective tissue in the mutton, making it tender. Boiling hard would toughen the muscle fibers and dry the meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sugar, clove, pepper, ginger, beef, onion):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sugar, clove, pepper, ginger, beef, onion. 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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