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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled until tender, served with melted butter and capers or nasturtiums.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and capers are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,637 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the leg of mutton clean and trim the shank bone and knuckle.

  2. Place the mutton in a pot and cover it with water.

Boil and rest

  1. Boil gently for 2 to 3 hours, skimming the surface regularly.

  2. If using the broth for soup, add a little salt while boiling.

  3. Otherwise, salt the mutton when partially cooked.

  4. Remove from heat and cover the pot to let it steam for 10 to 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter mixed with capers or nasturtiums.

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. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + caperstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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 meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering in water.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and balances the lean boiled meat.
Capers
Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Boil gently and skim. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the broth clear, while a hard boil toughens muscle fibres and emulsifies fat into the liquid. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the broth and spoil its flavour.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Pepperfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersthe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter. 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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