Name: Roast Leg of Mutton
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton (10 pounds); drippings from the roast; current jelly; 1 cup red wine

Why it works: Mutton and red wine work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

1 leg of mutton (10 pounds)
drippings from the roast
current jelly
1 cup red wine

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Roast the leg of mutton for 2 hours.
Halfway through, remove excess fat from the roaster.
Baste the meat with the drippings.
Add 10 minutes of roasting time for each additional pound.

Make the gravy

For gravy, mix drippings with current jelly and red wine.

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.

Mutton + red winetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together117 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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, providing the bulk of the dish and its flavor.
Drippings from the roast: Carry roasted meat flavor and moisture when basted over the meat and used in the gravy.
Current jelly: Adds sweetness and tartness to the gravy, balancing the rich drippings.
Red wine: Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the gravy.

“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.