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Mutton Dressed Like Venison

A leg of mutton prepared like venison, served with currant jelly, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton Dressed Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Hang the leg of mutton until it freezes.

  2. Slice the frozen mutton into ¼ inch thick slices.

  3. Cook the slices at the table in a chafing dish with butter.

  4. Serve with currant jelly and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
The main meat, which is sliced thin and cooked quickly so it stays tender.
Butter
Fat that cooks the thin slices and adds richness and browning in the chafing dish.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness that balances the rich, gamey flavour of the meat.

The step that matters

Slice the mutton while it is frozen. Partly freezing firms the meat so a knife can cut even, thin slices without tearing. Fully thawed meat is soft and squashes, so the slices come out uneven and ragged.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, 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 venison-style mutton recipes

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