Name: To Boil a Leg of Mutton
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton; water; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); finely chopped capers; butter; turnips

Why it works: Capers and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leg

Keep the leg of mutton for 4 to 5 days before boiling.
Bend the shank and cut the tendon at the joint if necessary to shorten the leg.
Place the leg in a pot and cover with water, adding coarse sea salt to taste.
Do not wrap the leg in cloth, as it will spoil the broth.

Boil and serve

Boil gently for 2 hours until cooked through.
Serve the leg with some of the cooking liquid, placing the lower side up for carving.
Prepare a sauce with finely chopped capers mixed into melted butter.
Serve with mashed or whole turnips as a side.

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.

Capers + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together145 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,558 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,100 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg: Forms the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering.
Butter: Melts into a rich, smooth sauce that adds fat and carries the flavour of the capers.
Capers: Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the meat and butter.
Turnips: Provide mild sweetness and a starchy, soft texture as a side dish.

The step that matters

Do not wrap the leg in cloth. Wrapping the leg in cloth would spoil the broth, so it should be cooked bare in the water to keep the cooking liquid clean and usable for serving.

Swap the turnip

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

Shallotfits better
Chivefits about as well
Leekfits about as well
Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, capers, butter. 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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To Boil a Leg of Mutton