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Gigot Roti a LA Provencale

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with oil, onions, parsley, garlic, sea salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Gigot Roti a LA Provencale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tenderize the leg of mutton by beating it with a rolling pin.

  2. Marinate the mutton in oil with onions and parsley for 1–2 days.

  3. Insert the clove of garlic into the handle of the mutton.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the mutton over a hot fire until nearly done. Reduce the heat to moderate.

  2. Baste the mutton often.

  3. Serve the mutton with its own gravy.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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; beating it tenderizes the muscle fibres before cooking.
Oil
Carries flavour into the meat during marinating and helps keep the surface moist while roasting.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the marinade.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the marinade.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that infuses the meat from the clove inserted into it.

The step that matters

Reduce the heat to moderate. Roasting over a hot fire until nearly done sears the outside, but high heat continued to the end would dry and toughen the interior. Lowering the heat lets the centre cook gently and evenly while basting keeps the surface moist.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, parsley, garlic, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, parsley, garlic, pepper. 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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