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A Leg of Mutton to Roast

A leg of mutton roasted and served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,077 recipes. The science ↓

A Leg of Mutton to Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Ask your butcher to remove the shank and skin from the leg of mutton.

  2. Wrap the flank tightly and secure it with skewers.

  3. Make a gash in the joint.

  4. Turn up the bone close to the fillet and secure the bone with skewers.

Roast and serve

  1. Dredge the meat well with flour and coarse sea salt.

  2. Roast the meat over a good fire, basting often.

  3. Serve with currant jelly.

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 + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  2. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms a dry coating on the meat that helps it brown during roasting.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the outer surface and helps draw out moisture for a crisper crust.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balances the rich, savoury flavour of the mutton.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour. 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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