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Boiled Leg of Mutton with Caper Sauce

A boiled leg of mutton served with a sauce of butter, flour, water, capers, lemon, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the mutton

  1. Boil the leg of mutton until cooked through, about 1 hour per pound.

  2. Remove the mutton to a platter and garnish with parsley.

Make the caper sauce

  1. For the caper sauce, heat the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the boiling water while stirring until thickened.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Stir in the French capers and remove from heat.

  6. Add the juice of half a lemon before serving.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 of meat that is cooked through by boiling.
Butter
Provides fat and richness as the base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and boiling water.
French capers
Add briny, sharp flavour that cuts through the rich sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Slowly add the boiling water while stirring. Adding liquid gradually while stirring lets the starch in the flour disperse evenly and swell. Adding it all at once can form lumps that are hard to smooth out.

“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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