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Boiled Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce

A boiled leg of mutton served with turnips and a caper‑sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the leg of mutton slowly in salted water for several hours.

  2. Add whole turnips to the pot and cook until tender.

  3. For the caper sauce, mix 1 cup of capers into 1 pint of allemande sauce.

  4. Serve the mutton with the turnips and 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. Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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
Slow boiling over several hours breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Allemande sauce
A creamy, velvety base that carries the capers and coats the mutton and turnips.
Capers
Their sharp, briny acidity cuts through the richness of the boiled mutton.
Whole turnips
Cook until tender in the pot, adding a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the leg of mutton slowly. A gentle simmer, not a rolling boil, cooks the meat evenly and keeps it tender. Vigorous boiling toughens the outer fibres and can leave the inside underdone.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Welsh onionfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sauce, capers. 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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