Skip to main content
Main

Braised Leg of Mutton

A slow‑cooked leg of mutton stewed with bacon, carrots, onions, herbs, and water, served with a thickened gravy and fried potato olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Braised Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line the bottom of a thick iron kettle or stew-pan with thin slices of bacon.

  2. Place 4 carrots, 3 onions, and a bunch of savory herbs over the bacon.

  3. Put the leg of mutton on top, cover with more bacon, and pour in ½ pint of water.

Braise and season

  1. Cover tightly and stew gently for 4 hours, basting occasionally with its own juices.

  2. Season with salt and pepper when the meat begins to tenderize.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy and thicken it with 1 tablespoon of flour until brown.

  2. Pour some gravy over the meat and serve the rest in a tureen.

  3. Garnish the dish with potatoes cut like olives and fried in butter.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury juices that flavour the meat and the gravy below it.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the braising liquid and the resulting gravy.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding savoury depth and sweetness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy and helps it brown as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stew gently with the lid tightly covered. Slow, gentle heat in a sealed pot breaks down tough connective tissue in the mutton and keeps the meat moist. Boiling hard would toughen the muscle fibres and dry the meat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, pepper, flour, potato, butter. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes