Skip to main content
Main

To Boil a Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled in salted water, served with caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

To Boil a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. Place the leg of mutton in a kettle.

  2. Pour boiling water over the meat to sear the surface and retain the juices.

  3. Cover tightly and skim off any foam as necessary.

Season and serve

  1. Add coarse sea salt after 45 minutes of cooking.

  2. Serve with caper 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

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg
The main cut; its connective tissue softens slowly during long moist cooking, making the meat tender.
Boiling water
Sears the surface and helps hold in the juices, as the method describes.

The step that matters

Skim off foam as necessary. Foam is coagulated protein and impurities rising from the meat. Removing it keeps the cooking liquid clear and avoids a scummy, off-tasting broth.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes