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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton served with parsley or celery, butter, caper sauce, pickled kidney beans, onion sauce, mashed turnips, spinach, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 320 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the shank bone and trim the knuckle.

Boil

  1. Boil the leg of mutton in salted water, skimming off any foam.

  2. Cook for three hours if the leg weighs 9 or 10 pounds.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley or celery and butter, or with caper sauce, pickled kidney beans, and onion sauce.

  2. Accompany with mashed turnips, spinach, and potatoes.

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. Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 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, cooked whole by boiling until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the serving, as a simple accompaniment.

The step that matters

Skimming off the foam while boiling. Foam rising from the surface contains coagulated proteins and impurities. Removing it keeps the broth clear and stops the foam from settling back onto the meat and making it look and taste muddy.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, butter, sauce, onion, turnip, spinach):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, butter, sauce, onion, turnip, spinach. 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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