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Boiled Mutton

A boiled mutton served with a caper sauce, cooked with root vegetables and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Plunge the mutton into a kettle of boiling salted water.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Move the mutton to the side of the range.

  4. Afterward, cook slowly for 15 minutes per pound.

  5. Half an hour before serving, add the carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, and mint.

  6. Remove the mutton.

  7. Brush the mutton with butter.

  8. Keep the mutton covered and warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain some of the cooking liquid to use as a base for a white sauce.

  2. Set the remaining liquid aside for soup stock.

  3. Chill the reserved liquid to separate the fat.

  4. Skim the fat from the liquid.

  5. Thicken the liquid with a white roux.

  6. Stir in a spoonful of capers.

  7. Serve in a sauce boat.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long slow simmering in water.
Butter
Brushed over the cooked meat to add richness and a glossy finish.
White roux (in the method)
Flour and butter cooked together to thicken the strained cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Cook slowly after the first 15 minutes. Boiling hard after the initial sear-in of heat toughens meat fibres and makes the mutton dry and stringy. A gentle, barely moving simmer lets the connective tissue soften gradually and keeps the meat tender and juicy.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, butter. 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 boiled mutton recipes

Leg 48with Caper Sauce 14Neck 12Shoulder 9Breast 7Shoulder with Oysters 7 See all 59 →

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