Name: Leg of Mutton with Oysters
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton; coarse sea salt; oysters; 1 glass red wine

Why it works: Mutton and oyster work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton with Oysters

Ingredients

1 leg of mutton
coarse sea salt
oysters
1 glass red wine

Directions

Prepare

Rub the leg of mutton all over with coarse sea salt.

Roast and stuff

Place it on the spit to roast over a clear fire, basting with its own gravy.
When nearly done, remove it and make incisions all over the meat.
Stuff an oyster into each incision.
Return it to the fire to finish roasting.

Finish the gravy

Before serving, skim the gravy and bring it to a boil with the red wine.

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.

Mutton + oystertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together317 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mutton + red winetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together117 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Oyster + red winetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together92 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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 meat carries the roasting and basting.
Oysters: Stuffed into the incisions, they add a briny, savoury flavour to the meat as it finishes roasting.
Red wine: Added to the gravy and boiled, it adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.

“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.