Name: Boiled Leg of Mutton
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton; water; turnips (optional)

Why it works: Mutton and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,558 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

1 leg of mutton
water
turnips (optional)

Directions

Bring a pot of water to a boil.
Add the leg of mutton and let it simmer gently.
If using turnips, add them 30 minutes before the meat is done.
Cook for 15 minutes per pound of meat.

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.

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: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers slowly in water.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and a tender, earthy bite to the broth-cooked dish.

“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.