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Cured Mutton Iltams

A method for curing mutton using a salt, sugar, spice, and water mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cured Mutton Iltams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cure

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pot and boil for a few minutes.

Cure the mutton

  1. Rub the mixture onto the mutton while hot.

  2. Repeat the rubbing process daily for three weeks.

  3. After three weeks, the mutton will be ready to hang.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic cured colour during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it while helping preserve it.
Common salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it while helping preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
Allspice
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the meat.
Whole black pepper
Adds sharp aromatic heat to the cured surface.

The step that matters

Repeat the daily rubbing for three weeks. Salt and cure penetrate meat slowly, from the surface inward. Skipping days or stopping early leaves the centre under-cured, so the rubbing must continue consistently until the full period is complete.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper. 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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