Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled until tender, served with a sauce of cider vinegar, butter, salt, cayenne pepper, and nasturtium seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the mutton

  1. Place the leg of mutton in a pot and cover it with boiling water.

  2. Add the cider vinegar and salt.

  3. Cook for about 4 hours, or until very tender.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, strain the cooking liquid.

  2. Thicken the strained liquid with flour mixed in cold water.

  3. Add butter, more salt, cayenne pepper, and chopped nasturtium seeds to the sauce.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cider + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps soften the meat during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
Nasturtium seeds
Provide a sharp, peppery tang that cuts through the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Cook until very tender. Mutton is a tough cut that needs long, slow cooking at a gentle simmer for the connective tissue to break down. Stopping early leaves the meat chewy, so the cook should check for tenderness rather than relying only on the clock.

“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 leg of mutton recipes

with Caper Sauce 5with Tongue and Turnips 4 See all 96 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesHam in CiderHam in Cider10 recipes