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Boiled Mutton, Caper Sauce

A boiled mutton served with a sauce of butter, capers, lemon juice, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton, Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the mutton

  1. In a large pot, cover the mutton with water and add salt.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours until tender.

Make the caper sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, melt butter over low heat.

  2. Add capers, lemon juice, and black pepper to the melted butter.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton with the caper sauce drizzled on 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Is the main protein; simmering slowly breaks down connective tissue so the meat becomes tender.
Butter
Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the capers and lemon.
Capers
Add a salty, tangy bite that cuts through the richness of the mutton and butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the butter sauce and balances the fatty meat.

The step that matters

Simmer the mutton gently. A hard, rapid boil toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the meat stringy. A low, steady simmer lets collagen slowly soften into gelatin, so the mutton stays tender and moist.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, lemon, 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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