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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton cooked with garlic, salt, and optional carrots or turnips, served with buttered vegetables and capers in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut off the shank of the leg of mutton and wrap the flank securely with skewers.

  2. Dredge the mutton well with flour.

  3. Place the mutton in a kettle of cold water with some coarse sea salt and garlic.

  4. Skin the mutton well and cook until nearly done.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat, cover closely, and keep hot to finish cooking with steam.

  2. Boil carrots or mash turnips with butter and salt for serving.

  3. Lay the mutton on the vegetables and pour over melted butter mixed with flour.

  4. Heat capers with vinegar over the fire and pour over the mutton before serving.

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. Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Garlic + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cooks through gently in water and then finishes with residual steam.
Flour
Dredging coats the meat, and flour mixed into the butter thickens the pan sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the melted butter sauce and the mashed turnips.
Capers
Their briny, sharp flavour cuts through the richness of the mutton and butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the warm caper sauce.

The step that matters

Remove from heat, cover closely, and keep hot to finish cooking with steam. Taking the mutton off the heat while it is still nearly done lets residual heat and trapped steam cook it through gently. Cooking it fully before this point risks dry, overcooked meat.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, garlic, turnip, butter, capers, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, garlic, turnip, butter, capers, vinegar. 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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