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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled with butter, onion juice, lemon, salt, pepper, and served with a tomato‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter and onion juice in a kettle over high heat.

  2. Add the mutton and cook for 10 minutes, turning frequently.

  3. Cover the mutton with hot water, then add the lemon slice, salt, and pepper. Cook for 2.5 hours.

  4. Combine tomato juice, butter, flour, vinegar, salt, and pepper to make 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg
Is the main cut that becomes tender and flavorful during long simmering in water.
Tomato juice
Provides acidity and body to the sauce that accompanies the meat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the mutton and tomato sauce.

The step that matters

Cook for 2.5 hours. Long, gentle cooking in water is needed to break down the tough connective tissue in mutton. Cooking too briefly leaves the meat chewy, while a rolling boil can toughen the muscle fibers and dry the surface.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, mutton, pepper, tomato, flour, vinegar):

  1. Cherryfits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, mutton, pepper, tomato, flour, vinegar. 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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