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Leg of Mutton A-LA-haut Gout

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with garlic, pepper, and coarse sea salt, served with gravy and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton A-LA-haut Gout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take a leg of mutton that has hung for two weeks.

  2. Stuff the leg with cloves of garlic.

  3. Rub the leg with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the leg of mutton until properly done.

  2. Serve with good gravy and red wine in the dish.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Pepper + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Forms the main body of the dish, and its rich meat flavour is the centre of the roast.
Cloves of garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and sweetens as the meat roasts.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the surface and helps draw out moisture for a more browned crust.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the serving liquid.

The step that matters

Roast the leg of mutton until properly done. Meat cooked too little stays tough and unsafe to eat, while overcooking dries out the muscle fibres. Judging doneness by internal temperature rather than time helps the cook hit the right point.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, pepper, red wine):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, pepper, red wine. 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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