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Braised Leg of Mutton

Braised leg of mutton cooked slowly with veal trimmings, carrots, onions, parsley, green onions, and bacon, finished with a glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Braised Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. Place the leg of mutton in a braising pan with veal trimmings, carrots, onions, parsley, and green onions.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and cover with thin slices of bacon to prevent burning.

  3. Stew for 4 hours.

Make the glaze and serve

  1. Strain the liquid through a sieve and reduce it to a glaze.

  2. Glaze the mutton and serve with glazed onions.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

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

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 through long, slow stewing.
Veal trimmings
Add gelatin and body to the braising liquid, which thickens it into a glaze.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and depth to the liquid.
Carrots
Release sugars during stewing, adding sweetness and rounding the flavour of the liquid.
Bacon
Adds fat and salty flavour, and its slices shield the meat from burning.

The step that matters

Reduce the strained liquid to a glaze. Reducing concentrates the gelatin and flavour of the braising liquid. Stop too early and the glaze stays thin; go too far and it turns sticky or bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

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