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Boiled Leg of Mutton with Caper-sauce

A boiled leg of mutton served with a caper sauce made from capers, vinegar, and drawn butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,637 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton with Caper-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the mutton

  1. Cut off the small bone at the end of the leg of mutton, leaving the meat to cover the joint.

  2. Place the mutton in a kettle of cold water and bring to a boil as quickly as possible.

  3. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer slowly until the meat is cooked through.

Make the caper sauce

  1. For the caper sauce, prepare drawn butter using some of the cooking liquid.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of capers and 1 tablespoon of their vinegar to the drawn butter.

  3. Stir the mixture, bring it to a boil again, and pour the sauce into a hot gravy boat.

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. Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Capers + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Mutton + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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, cooked gently in water until tender throughout.
Butter
Forms the drawn butter base that gives the sauce its smooth, rich body.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter and meat.
Caper vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Simmering the mutton slowly after bringing it to a boil. Boiling hard after the initial boil toughens meat proteins and can make the outside overcooked before the centre is done. A gentle simmer cooks the joint evenly and keeps it tender and juicy.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, vinegar, butter):

  1. Pepperfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, 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.

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