Skip to main content
Main

Roast Saddle of Mutton

A roasted mutton saddle, seasoned with flour and basted with butter or pan juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Saddle of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. If the butcher has not done so, carefully remove the skin from the saddle of mutton and skewer it back on.

Roast

  1. Roast the mutton, basting frequently to keep it moist.

  2. About 30 minutes before the mutton is done, remove the skin and lightly dust the joint with flour.

  3. Continue roasting, ensuring the fat does not burn, for a total of 2 to 2.5 hours, depending on the size.

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

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

  3. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

Saddle of mutton
Provides the main protein and fat, which render and baste the meat as it roasts.
Flour
Dusted on the joint late in roasting to help form a light, browned crust.
Melted butter or pan juices
Adds moisture and fat to the surface, keeping the meat from drying and helping it brown.

The step that matters

Removing the skin and dusting with flour. Once the skin is off, the exposed fat can scorch if the heat is too high or the joint is left unattended. Keeping the fat from burning while the flour browns lets the surface turn golden rather than bitter.

“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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes