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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton cooked with salt, soup vegetables, and finished with white sauce and parsley or capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 and boil

  1. Wipe the leg of mutton.

  2. Place the leg of mutton in a kettle.

  3. Cover the leg with boiling water.

  4. Bring the water to a quick boil.

  5. Boil the leg for five minutes.

  6. Skim off any foam.

  7. Reduce the heat.

  8. Simmer the leg until tender, about 15 minutes per pound.

  9. Halfway through cooking, add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  10. Thirty minutes before removing, add sliced soup vegetables for flavor.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut carrots and turnips into half-inch thick slices.

  2. Scallop the edges of the sliced carrots and turnips.

Serve

  1. Place the cooked mutton on a hot dish.

  2. Rub the mutton with enough white sauce to cover the surface.

  3. Sprinkle the mutton with chopped parsley or capers.

  4. String the sliced vegetables onto the bone for presentation.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Soup vegetables
Add aromatic flavor to the cooking water and are served alongside the meat.
White sauce
Coats the surface of the meat, adding moisture and a creamy, mild finish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and cooking liquid during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the quick boil. Once the heat is reduced, a gentle simmer lets connective tissue in the mutton break down slowly. A hard boil toughens the meat's outer fibres and can leave the interior dry and stringy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Celeryfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

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