Skip to main content
Main

Leg of Mutton

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, cooked with fat and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Leg of Mutton

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Carefully remove the outer skin from the leg of mutton.

  2. Wash the meat and season it well with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Place the leg in a roasting pan and dredge it with a little flour.

Roast and serve

  1. Add 1 ½ tablespoons of fat and 1 ½ cups of water to the pan, stirring well.

  2. Roast in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 2.5 to 3 hours, basting frequently.

  3. Serve on a heated dish, nicely browned.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Leg of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during long roasting.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the outside brown and thicken the pan juices.
Fat
Adds richness and helps the surface brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during the roast. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and spreads fat and pan liquid over the meat, so it browns evenly rather than drying out over the 2.5 to 3 hour roast.

“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 leg of mutton recipes

Boiled 96Roast 55Roasted 55Braised 53Stuffed 47Cold Roast 10 See all 25 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes