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Game Mutton

Roasted leg of mutton with a brown gravy glaze made from boiled gravy, currant jelly, browned flour, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Game Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leg

  1. Trim the underside of the leg of mutton to make it flat without exposing the bone.

  2. Place the trimmed leg in a pot with 1 quart of water.

  3. Stew the leg until the water is reduced by half.

  4. Cool the broth. Skim the broth. Season the broth. Reheat the broth.

  5. Lard the upper side of the meat with slender strips of fat.

  6. Make diagonal incisions in the meat and insert fat using your fingers.

Roast and baste

  1. Rub the meat with hot butter and vinegar.

  2. Allow excess butter and vinegar to drip into the pan.

  3. Pour 1 pint of boiling gravy over the leg.

  4. Roast the leg for 12 minutes per pound.

  5. Baste the leg every 10 minutes while roasting.

Glaze and serve

  1. Before serving, pour off the fat from the gravy.

  2. Mix a few spoonfuls of the brown juice with currant jelly and browned flour. Wet the mixture with cold water.

  3. Baste the meat with this mixture until a fine brown glaze forms.

  4. Serve the well-skinned gravy in a boat.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Is the main cut that is larded, roasted and glazed as the centerpiece.
Fat for larding (in the method)
Strips inserted into the lean meat add moisture and richness as they melt during roasting.
Hot butter
Coats the surface, adding richness and helping the meat brown during roasting.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and flavor of the butter.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and gloss to the glaze, helping it brown in the oven.
Browned flour
Thickens the mixture and deepens the color of the glaze and gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the glaze until it browns. The glaze mixture contains sugar from the jelly, which browns quickly at high heat. Too little liquid or too much heat can scorch it before it forms an even, fine brown glaze.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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