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Mutton and Lamb

Roasted mutton and lamb served with a browned flour gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mutton and Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the mutton well and dry it with a clean cloth.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400 °F (200 °C).

  3. Place the mutton in a roasting pan with a little water.

  4. Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the meat when you first put it in the oven.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast the mutton for about 12 minutes per pound.

  2. Baste the mutton often with salt and water.

  3. Baste the mutton with the gravy.

  4. If the mutton browns too quickly, cover it with a large sheet of white paper.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy slightly with browned flour.

  3. Serve the mutton with currant jelly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  5. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Saddle of mutton
Is the main meat, cooked by dry roasting so its surface browns and its interior cooks through.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, helping the surface brown and stay moist.
Currant jelly
Adds sweet-tart acidity that balances the rich flavour of the mutton.

The step that matters

Covering the mutton if it browns too quickly. Sugars and proteins on the surface brown fast at high heat and can scorch before the interior cooks. A loose covering of white paper slows surface colour while the meat finishes cooking through.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour. 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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