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Roast Leg of Mutton

Roast leg of mutton served with currant jelly, steamed broccoli, and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Broccoli and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 910 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season the leg of mutton with salt and pepper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the mutton in the oven for about 2 hours, or until cooked to your liking.

  2. Serve with currant jelly, steamed broccoli, and boiled potatoes.

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. Broccoli + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together910 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + broccolitop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Currant + potatotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 meat; its fat and connective tissue soften and baste the meat as it roasts.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, savoury flavour of the mutton.
Potatoes
Provide starchy bulk that absorbs the meat's flavour and pairs with the roast.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, broccoli, potato. 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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