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Boiled Leg of Mutton

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and cucumber work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 192 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Tie the mutton in a coarse net or tarlatan.

  2. Place it in a large pot of boiling water with a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Cook steadily for 15 minutes per pound.

  4. Save the broth for soup.

  5. Remove the net from the meat and rub it with butter.

  6. Serve on a hot dish with oyster sauce on the side.

  7. Garnish with sliced cucumber pickles.

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. Oyster + cucumbertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mutton + oystertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, oyster, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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