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Mutton Turkey

A boned leg of mutton stuffed with turkey dressing, boiled and roasted, served with potatoes, turnips, and cranberry or apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and turnip work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Fill the cavity of the boned leg of mutton with turkey dressing and sew it up.

Cook

  1. Place the joint in a pot of boiling water and let it boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the mutton from the pot, reserving some of the cooking liquid.

  3. Roast the mutton in the oven for 1.5 hours, basting frequently.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with potatoes, turnips, and cranberry or apple sauce.

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. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turkey + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Turnip + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + cranberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Mutton + turkeytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 slow simmering and then roasting.
Turkey dressing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the meat as it cooks.
Cranberry or apple sauce
Its tartness cuts through the rich, fatty flavour of the mutton.

The step that matters

Roast the mutton in the oven for 1.5 hours, basting frequently. Basting keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly, since the meat was already simmered and can dry out easily in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turkey, turnip, cranberry. 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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