Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Leg of Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton leg with turnip and carrot, finished with flour and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the mutton

  1. Melt the butter in an iron pot.

  2. Add the leg of mutton and cook for 1 hour.

  3. Turn the meat frequently until browned all over.

  4. About 1 hour before finishing, sprinkle in the flour and add salt to taste.

  5. If there is excess fat, skim it off.

Add the vegetables

  1. Boil the chopped turnip and carrot until tender, then drain.

  2. After removing the meat, add the vegetables to the pot and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the main meat, which browns and becomes tender during slow cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and helps the meat brown and the sauce become richer.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the meat and carries flavour through the pot.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the stew once cooked through.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour, softening into the stew.

The step that matters

Turning the meat until browned all over. Browning through frequent turning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Uneven or pale browning leaves the stew tasting flat, and meat that sits still can scorch on one side.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, mutton, flour, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, mutton, flour, turnip. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes