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Boiled Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled until tender, served with optional rice, hominy, currant jelly, or mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and mustard work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 599 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the leg of mutton in water until tender.

  2. Allow the water to reduce to create gravy.

  3. Serve with boiled rice or coarse boiled hominy.

  4. Optionally, serve with currant jelly and a sprinkling of mustard.

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. Rice + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together599 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Mutton + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

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

  3. Rice + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together497 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + mustardtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124 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

Leg of mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long boiling.
Water
Cooks the mutton and reduces into a gravy as it boils down.

The step that matters

Boil the leg of mutton in water until tender.. Boiling needs enough time for the tough connective tissue in the meat to soften fully. Stopping early leaves the mutton firm and chewy, so check tenderness before serving.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, rice, mustard):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice, mustard. 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.

More boiled mutton recipes

Leg 48with Caper Sauce 14Neck 12Shoulder 9Breast 7Shoulder with Oysters 7 See all 59 →

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