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To Dress a Leg of Mutton to Eat Like Venison

A leg of mutton cured and dry‑aged with red wine, then roasted, served with venison sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and venison work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Dress a Leg of Mutton to Eat Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leg

  1. Get the largest and fattest leg of mutton.

  2. Cut it out like a haunch of venison while it is warm.

  3. Remove the bloody vein and make several incisions in the underside with a sharp knife.

Marinate and dry

  1. Pour the red wine over the leg and turn it in the wine four to five times a day for five days.

  2. Dry it well with a clean cloth and hang it in the air with the thick end up for five days.

  3. Dry it morning and night to prevent dampness or mustiness.

Cover and roast

  1. When ready to roast, cover it with paper and paste as you would venison.

  2. Roast for four hours and serve with venison sauce.

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. Mutton + venisontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

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

  2. Red wine + venisontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Mutton + red winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  5. Venison + saucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together208 recipes

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 large meat joint that is cut, aged and roasted as the main dish.
Red wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the surface of the meat during the soaking period.

The step that matters

Drying the leg before and during hanging. Surface moisture lets mould and musty smells develop during the long hanging period. Drying the leg well with a clean cloth and drying it again morning and night keeps the surface dry, which slows spoilage.

“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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