Skip to main content
Main

Braised Mutton

Braised mutton stuffed with a breadcrumb and herb mixture, cooked with vegetables and stock, then finished with a mushroom ketchup and Worcestershire sauce glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Braised Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing and roll

  1. Chop the suet finely and combine it with bread crumbs, parsley, grated lemon rind, and salt.

  2. Moisten the mixture with egg and milk, then place it inside the mutton, roll it up, and tie securely.

Braise and bake

  1. Slice the vegetables and place them with the bones in a saucepan along with cloves, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  2. Pour 1 pint of stock or water over the vegetables, place the mutton on top, and boil slowly for about 1.5 hours.

  3. After boiling, brush the mutton with glaze or sprinkle with flour, pepper, and salt, then bake for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. To make the sauce, pour off the fat from the pan, stir in the browned flour, add the stock from cooking the meat, mushroom ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Boil the sauce for 2 minutes, then strain it around the meat.

  3. Cut the vegetables in stock to decorate the dish.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 during slow braising.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds together when rolled.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during cooking.
Egg
Binds the stuffing mixture together as it cooks.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, deeper colour and flavour.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling slowly for the braise. Gentle simmering lets the connective tissue in the mutton break down slowly into tender meat. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and can dry out the meat and stuffing.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, bread, lemon, parsley, egg, milk, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, bread, lemon, parsley, egg, milk, 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.

More braised mutton recipes

Cutlets 15Leg 9Chops 7Neck 6Loin 5Necks 5 See all 12 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes