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To Dress a Leg of Mutton to Eat Like Venison

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with salt, wrapped in pastry, served with gravy, red wine, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Red wine and currant work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Dress a Leg of Mutton to Eat Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Keep the leg of mutton in the air for several days with the thick end up, wiping it dry daily.

  2. Grease a piece of paper and wrap it around the mutton, then cover with pastry and secure with another piece of paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the mutton at 400°F (200°C) for about three hours.

  2. Remove the pastry 10 minutes before it's done to achieve a cinnamon brown color.

  3. Serve with good gravy, red wine, 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. Red wine + curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mutton + red winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together117 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 roast; its dense muscle cooks slowly and stays juicy when roasted whole.
Pastry
Encloses the meat, shielding it from direct heat so it cooks gently, then browns when uncovered.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the accompanying sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness that balances the rich, savoury meat.

The step that matters

Remove the pastry 10 minutes before it's done. Timing the uncovering matters: leaving the pastry on too long can char or over-brown it, while removing it too early stops the surface from taking on the cinnamon-brown colour through browning reactions.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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