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Leg of Mutton, English Style

Roasted leg of mutton served with a peppermint vinegar and sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peppermint and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,517 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton, English Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove excess fat from the leg of mutton and wash it well.

  2. Pound the meat, then season with salt and pepper.

Roast

  1. Place in the oven with ½ pint of boiling water and add 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Roast for 1½ hours, basting frequently for rare, or 2 to 2½ hours for well done.

Serve

  1. Wash and finely chop the peppermint, then mix with vinegar and sugar to serve with the meat.

  2. For gravy, pour off fat, add 1½ tablespoons of flour, brown it, then stir in 1 cup of water and ¼ cup of cream, boil, season with salt, strain, and serve.

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. Peppermint + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Peppermint + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together769 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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, and its fat and lean meat set the texture and flavour of the roast.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the roast, helping browning and a moist surface.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts through the richness of the meat and the mint sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy as it browns in the pan fat.
Cream (in the method)
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar in the mint sauce.

The step that matters

Roasting time for doneness. Rare and well-done results depend on the cooking time, so the cook must check the meat early for rare. Basting keeps the surface moist while the meat roasts, so the outside does not dry out before the centre is cooked.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, pepper, vinegar, sugar. 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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