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A Leg of Mutton Boiled

A boiled leg of mutton served with a gravy of carrots, turnips, onions, cloves, pepper, salt, wine, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Leg of Mutton Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Flour a cloth and tightly tie the leg of mutton in it.

  2. Place the wrapped mutton in boiling water and boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. After boiling, transfer the mutton to a pan and pour cold water over it for 2 minutes before removing the cloth.

Simmer and make the gravy

  1. Place the cold or uncooked mutton in a saucepan and add the diced carrots, turnips, and onions around it.

  2. Add cloves, pepper, salt, and enough water to cover the mutton.

  3. Simmer for 4 hours, allowing the water to reduce for gravy.

  4. Remove the mutton and skim off excess fat from the gravy.

  5. About 30 minutes before serving, stir in the white wine and soy sauce.

Serve

  1. Dish the mutton and thicken the gravy with a little flour, bringing it to a boil before serving with the vegetables.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Leg of mutton
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated with the cooking liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the savory flavor of the gravy.
Soy sauce
Adds savory depth and color to the gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat from the gravy. Fat rendered from the mutton floats on the simmering liquid. Skimming it before thickening keeps the gravy from tasting greasy and stops it from separating.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, carrot, turnip, clove, pepper, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, carrot, turnip, clove, pepper, white 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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