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Roast Leg of Mutton Stuffed

A roast leg of mutton stuffed with a seasoned breadcrumb mixture and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Mutton Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of mutton.

  2. Sprinkle the inside with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Make the stuffing

  1. Combine stale bread crumbs, melted butter, salt, black pepper, marjoram, sage, and onion juice in a bowl to make the stuffing.

  2. Add hot water if the mixture is not moist enough.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the leg with the stuffing mixture and sew it closed.

  2. Cook the stuffed leg of mutton as you would a regular roast leg of mutton.

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. Marjoram + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 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

Leg of mutton
Forms the main roast; its meat is the body of the dish, cooked as a regular roast.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices to form a moist, bulking stuffing inside the meat.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the bread crumbs moist and flavourful.
Marjoram
Adds a warm, aromatic herbal flavour to the stuffing.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour that complements the mutton.

The step that matters

Add hot water if the mixture is not moist enough. Stale bread crumbs are dry and need liquid to soften and hold together. A stuffing that is too dry will not bind well and can taste crumbly, while adding water gradually lets you judge the moisture.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, bread, butter, marjoram, sage):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, bread, butter, marjoram, sage. 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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