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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled with salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, parsley, celery, onion, carrot, and turnip, served with caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the leg of mutton and place it in a kettle.

  2. Cover with boiling water and bring to a boil quickly.

Cook the mutton

  1. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove any scum.

  2. Reduce heat and let simmer until the meat is tender.

  3. When the meat is halfway done, add salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, parsley, celery, onion, carrot, and turnip.

  4. Once cooked, remove the meat to a hot platter.

Serve

  1. Garnish the bone with a paper frill or fancy-shaped cooked vegetables.

  2. Serve with Caper Sauce I or II.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Celery + turniptop 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

Leg of mutton
Is the main cut; slow simmering in water turns its connective tissue tender.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and cooking liquid as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Removing the scum after the first boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise to the surface when water first boils. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, celery, carrot, turnip. 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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