Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled with salt, served with caper or egg sauce and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,675 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the leg of mutton and wrap it in a heavily floured cloth.

Boil

  1. Put the wrapped leg in boiling water and simmer for 15 minutes per pound.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt when the cooking time is halfway done.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with caper or egg sauce and garnish with parsley.

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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mutton + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,915 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through slowly in the water.
Flour
The floured cloth forms a coating that helps protect the meat's surface during boiling.
Salt
Seasons the meat and water during cooking.

The step that matters

Simmering the wrapped leg. The water must be kept at a gentle simmer rather than a hard rolling boil. Vigorous boiling can toughen the meat and break up the floured cloth, so the leg cooks more evenly and stays tender.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, sauce. 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.

More boiled leg of mutton recipes

with Caper Sauce 5with Tongue and Turnips 4 See all 96 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes