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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled with coarse sea salt, optionally with turnips and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the shank-bone from the leg of mutton.

  2. Place the mutton in a pot of boiling water, ensuring it is fully covered.

Simmer and skim

  1. Reduce heat to a gentle simmer.

  2. Add a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  4. If using turnips, add them after 45 minutes of cooking.

  5. If using carrots, add them after the first scum has been removed.

  6. Cook for about 15 minutes per pound of mutton.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. 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

Mutton
Meat that becomes tender and flavorful as its connective tissue breaks down during long gentle simmering.

The step that matters

Reduce to a gentle simmer. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and churns fat and scum into the liquid, leaving the mutton tough and the broth cloudy. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps the broth clear.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot):

  1. Turnipthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot. 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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