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Cold Roast Leo of Mutton

A cold roast leg of mutton filled with veal forcemeat, simmered with onions, parsley, bay leaves, carrots, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cold Roast Leo of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the large end of the leg of mutton to make the fillet flat.

  2. Remove the bone from the fillet and fill it with veal forcemeat.

Braise

  1. Place the meat, bones, knuckle, and trimmings in a large pot.

  2. Cover with water or broth and bring to a boil.

  3. Add onions, parsley, bay leaves, carrots, and turnips.

  4. Simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Finish the gravy

  1. Add thickening or store sauce to the gravy if desired before serving.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Fillet of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Veal forcemeat
Fills the boned cavity, adding moisture and richness to the sliced meat.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the cooking liquid as they soften.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and body to the cooking liquid as they soften.
Onions
Release sugars and aroma that flavour the broth and gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can break the meat apart. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue slowly break down into gelatin, keeping the mutton tender and moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, veal, meat, parsley, carrot, turnip, sauce):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, veal, meat, parsley, carrot, turnip, sauce. 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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