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Leg of Mutton Boiled

A leg of mutton boiled with onion and salt, served with caper sauce and mashed turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the leg of mutton as for roasting and soak it in cold water for 2 hours.

Boil

  1. Place the mutton in a pot and cover it with water.

  2. Add salt and the onion to the water, then bring to a gentle boil.

  3. Cook for 3 hours or until tender, depending on the weight.

  4. When nearly ready, remove from heat and let it sit covered in the water for 10-15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with caper sauce and mashed turnips.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

  3. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sauce + turniptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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; long gentle cooking breaks down its connective tissue until tender.
Onion
Adds a mild, savoury aroma to the cooking water that flavours the meat.
Salt
Seasons the cooking water so the meat is seasoned through as it cooks.

The step that matters

Bring to a gentle boil, not a rolling boil. A rolling boil toughens and dries the outer meat and churns the fibres apart. A gentle simmer lets collagen soften slowly, keeping the meat tender and juicy.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, 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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