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Leg of Mutton Boiled

A boiled leg of mutton seasoned with salt, served with mashed turnips, potatoes, greens, and optional sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,695 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the leg of mutton in salt and water for 1.5 hours, ensuring the water is not too salty.

  2. Wipe the mutton and wrap it in a floured cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the mutton for 2 to 2.5 hours, depending on its weight.

  2. Serve with mashed turnips, potatoes, greens, and caper sauce, or brown cucumber, or oyster 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. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy through long, gentle cooking in water.
Flour
Forms a floured layer around the meat that helps protect its surface and keep it moist while boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the mutton for 2 to 2.5 hours, depending on its weight.. Keep the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil, since vigorous boiling toughens meat fibres and makes them stringy. Cooking time should scale with weight so the centre becomes fully cooked without overcooking the outside.

“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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