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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled with salt, rice, and served with caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Boil

  1. Plunge the leg of mutton into boiling water to cover it well.

  2. Let it boil, then skim the surface.

  3. Add a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Remove to the back of the stove and simmer until tender.

  5. Add a handful of rice to the pot to whiten the meat.

Serve

  1. Serve with caper sauce.

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. Mutton + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Rice + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

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 that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Handful of rice
Is added to the pot to help whiten the meat during boiling.

The step that matters

Simmering until tender. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the connective tissue in the mutton soften slowly, so the meat stays moist and tender instead of tightening and drying out.

“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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