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A Leg of Mutton with Garlic

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with garlic, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,368 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

A Leg of Mutton with Garlic

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the mutton

  1. Roast the leg of mutton over a sharp fire, basting frequently.

Prepare and roast the garlic

  1. Prepare the garlic by boiling it in 5 different pots of salted water for 5 minutes each.

  2. Drain the garlic and place it in the dripping pan under the roasting mutton.

  3. Baste the garlic with the juices from the mutton.

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. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Garlic + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Clove + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mutton + garlictop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together673 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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 of meat, cooked by roasting over direct heat.
Garlic
Softened by boiling, then roasted, it turns mellow and sweet in flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and helps browning on the meat's surface.

The step that matters

Boiling the garlic in five changes of salted water. Repeated boiling in fresh salted water mellows the sharp, pungent compounds in raw garlic. Each change of water helps draw out bitterness, so the cloves turn soft and sweet rather than harsh when roasted.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, garlic, 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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