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To Roast a Leg of Mutton

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with sea salt, served with onion sauce and a gravy of currant jelly and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and red wine 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 Roast a Leg of Mutton

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.

Roast

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roast the leg of mutton for 2 to 2.5 hours, basting it often.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, mix the same as for roast beef or add a few spoonfuls of currant jelly and red wine.

  2. Serve with onion 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. Currant + red winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Red wine + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. 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
Is the main cut; long roasting slowly tenderises the meat and renders its fat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the rich, savoury meat juices in the gravy.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy made from the pan juices.
Onion
Gives a sweet, savoury aroma and flavour to the accompanying onion sauce.

The step that matters

Basting the mutton often during the roast. Regular basting spoons hot fat and juices back over the surface, helping it brown and stay moist during the long cooking time.

Swap the currant

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

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

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