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Breast of Mutton, Boiled, with Caper Sauce

Boiled mutton breast rolled with breadcrumb mixture and served with caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton, Boiled, with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bones and excess fat from the breast of mutton, then flatten the meat and season it well.

  2. In a bowl, mix the breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, herbs, salt, and pepper, then moisten the mixture with milk.

  3. Spread the mixture over the meat and roll the meat up lightly.

  4. Secure the roll with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rolled meat into boiling stock or water.

  2. If using water, add the onion, carrot, turnip, and peppercorns.

  3. Simmer gently for about 2 hours.

  4. Serve with caper sauce poured over the top.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton breast
Provides the main body of the dish, and its fat and connective tissue soften into tender, moist meat during simmering.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the milk and suet, holding the stuffing together and keeping it moist inside the roll.
Suet
Adds fat that melts into the stuffing during cooking, enriching flavour and keeping the filling moist.
Caper sauce
Adds a sharp, acidic contrast that cuts through the richness of the cooked mutton.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 2 hours. At a rolling boil the meat can toughen and the roll may break apart. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue break down slowly, leaving the meat tender and the stuffing intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, milk, pepper, sauce, meat, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, milk, pepper, sauce, meat, carrot. 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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