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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton served with drawn butter, sliced hard boiled eggs, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,239 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Place the leg of mutton and the small piece of pork in a large pot of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes for each pound of meat.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, prepare a sauce with drawn butter.

  2. Add the sliced hard boiled eggs and capers to the 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 + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

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

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Is the main cut of meat that is cooked through by boiling.
Drawn butter
Forms the rich, smooth base of the sauce, adding fat and flavour.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft texture and mild richness to the sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 to 20 minutes for each pound of meat. Boiling time depends on weight, so a cook who guesses may undercook or overcook the meat. Meat cooked in boiling water becomes tender as its connective tissue breaks down with sustained heat, but overcooking dries and toughens the fibres.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pork, butter, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersthe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, butter, egg. 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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