Name: Leg of Mutton Roasted
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton; coarse sea salt; black pepper; water; flour

Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Wipe the leg of mutton dry and dust it with flour and pepper.
Cut off the knuckle, remove the thick skin, and trim the thick flank.
Place a little salt and water in a roasting pan and baste the joint briefly.
Baste the joint every ten minutes with the meat's own gravy.
If the leg is too large, divide it and boil the knuckle.
Cover the cut-off piece with a paste of flour and water to retain gravy while roasting.

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.

Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,695 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).