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Spiced Shoulder of Mutton

A spiced mutton shoulder stewed with beef broth, water, onion, carrots, turnips, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 mutton joint and rub it with sugar mixed with cloves, pepper, mace, and ginger.

  2. Add salt the next day and keep the mutton turned, rubbing it with the pickle for 8 to 10 days.

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

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the mutton gently in beef broth for 4 hours, or add neck of beef, water, onion, carrots, turnips, and herbs.

  2. When tender, serve with its gravy thickened 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
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and helps cure it during the pickling period.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and adds sweetness to the cure.
Beef broth
Provides liquid for the slow stew and flavours the gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the stewing liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stewing liquid and vegetables.

The step that matters

Stewing gently until tender. Mutton shoulder is rich in connective tissue, which only breaks down into tender, juicy meat with low, slow heat over a long time. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the gravy cloudy.

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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