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Mutton, Leg Of, to Marinade

A marinated mutton leg roasted with onions, herbs, and spices, served with red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Mutton, Leg Of, to Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the mutton with halved onions until well coated with their juice.

  2. Prepare a marinade with garlic, peppercorns, cloves, herbs, parsley, salt, vinegar, and water.

  3. Place the mutton in a dish at least 5-6 inches deep and cover with the marinade.

Marinate

  1. Marinate for 24 hours, then rub with 4 fresh onions and return to the marinade for another 24 hours.

  2. Hang the mutton to drain the next day.

Roast and serve

  1. Wipe dry and roast the leg wrapped in buttered paper for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with red 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Long marinating and roasting turn the tough leg meat tender and flavourful.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps soften the meat's surface and adds a sharp tang.
Onions
Their juice and pulp moisten the meat and carry flavour into the surface.
Butter
Fat wrapped around the leg adds richness and helps the surface brown gently.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that penetrates the meat during the long marinade.

The step that matters

Drain and dry before roasting. Hanging to drain and then wiping the leg dry removes surface liquid, so the roast can brown rather than steam in the oven.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, clove, garlic, parsley, vinegar, butter):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, clove, garlic, parsley, vinegar, butter. 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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