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A Boiled Leg of Mutton with Tongue and Turnips

A boiled leg of mutton cooked with onions, cloves, parsley, thyme, carrots, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

A Boiled Leg of Mutton with Tongue and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim into handsome form a well-kept, but perfectly sweet leg of mutton, of middling weight; wash, but do not soak it; lay it into a vessel as nearly of its size as convenient, and pour in rather more than sufficient cold water to cover it.

Boil and simmer

  1. Set it over a good fire, and when it begins to boil take off the scum, and continue to do so until no more appears.

  2. Throw in a tablespoonful of salt (after the first skimming), which will assist to bring it to the surface, and as soon as the liquor is clear, add two moderate-sized onions stuck with a dozen cloves, a large faggot of parsley, thyme, and winter savoury, and four or five large carrots, and half an hour afterwards as many turnips.

  3. Draw the pan to the side of the fire, and let the mutton be simmered gently from two hours to two and a half, from the time of its first beginning to boil.

Serve

  1. Serve it with caper, brown cucumber, or oyster sauce.

  2. If stewed softly, as we have directed, the mutton will be found excellent dressed thus; otherwise, it will but resemble the unpalatable and ragged-looking joints of fast-boiled meat, so constantly sent to table by common English cooks.

  3. Any undressed bones of veal, mutton, or beef, boiled with the joint will improve it much, and the liquor will then make excellent soup or bouillon.

  4. A small smoked ox-tongue boiled very tender will generally be much approved as an accompaniment to the mutton, though it is out of the usual course to serve them together: innovation on established usages is, however, sometimes to be recommended.

  5. The tongue should be garnished with well-prepared mashed turnips, moulded with a tablespoon into the form of a half-egg, and sent to table as hot as possible; or the turnips may be dished apart.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

81Calories
2 gProtein
1 gFat
18 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Carrot1 medium (61g)25
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Thyme1 tsp dried (1.4g)4
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton (in the method)
Long gentle simmering turns the tough muscle tender and juicy, so the meat is not stringy or ragged.
Carrots
Release sweetness and aroma into the cooking liquor, flavouring the broth and the meat.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquor.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle simmer. At a fast boil, muscle proteins contract hard and toughen, and the meat breaks up and looks ragged. Slow simmering keeps the joint tender and moist, and skimming keeps the broth clear.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, parsley, thyme. 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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