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Boast Leg of Mutton

A roasted leg of mutton cooked at 350°F for 2 hours, optionally served with currant jelly and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and red wine work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Boast Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Roast the leg of mutton for 2 hours.

  3. Halfway through, remove excess fat from the roast.

  4. Baste the meat with the drippings.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, use the same method as for roast beef, or add currant jelly and red wine.

  2. Add 10 minutes of cooking time for each additional pound of mutton.

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. Currant + red winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mutton + red winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together117 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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, so its weight sets the total cooking time.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity to the gravy, balancing the richness of the meat.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy made from the pan drippings.

The step that matters

Removing excess fat halfway through. Fat that is left on the roast can stay greasy and blunt the flavour of the meat and gravy. Removing the surplus lets the surface brown and keeps the drippings clean for basting and gravy.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, red wine):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, red wine. 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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