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Leg of Mutton a LA Venison

A marinated and stewed leg of mutton flavored with vinegar, mustard, herbs, and spices, served with a thickened sauce and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton a LA Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all rough fat from the leg of mutton and place it in a deep dish.

  2. Rub the salt, brown sugar, black pepper, mustard, allspice, and sweet herbs thoroughly into the meat.

  3. Pour the vinegar over the meat, cover tightly, and refrigerate for 4 to 5 days, turning and basting with the liquid 3 to 4 times a day.

Stew and serve

  1. In a clean kettle, bring 1 quart of water to a boil and place an inverted tin pan or rack inside.

  2. Lay the mutton on the rack, cover the kettle tightly, and stew for 4 hours without letting the water touch the meat.

  3. Add 1 cup of hot water to the marinade and baste the mutton with it.

  4. When ready to serve, thicken the liquid in the kettle with flour, strain it, and serve the meat with the sauce and currant jelly.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Vinegar
Acidity penetrates the meat during marinating, tenderizing its fibers and adding tang.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it is stirred in.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Keeping the meat above the water while stewing. If the mutton touches the boiling water, it boils rather than steams, which toughens the surface and dilutes the flavor. Holding it on the rack lets gentle steam cook it evenly over four hours.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sugar, pepper, mustard, allspice, vinegar, flour):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sugar, pepper, mustard, allspice, vinegar, flour. 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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