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Leg of Mutton Stuffed

A leg of mutton stuffed with suet, spices, bread, eggs, and cloves, stewed with oysters and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Stuff the leg of mutton with mutton suet, salt, pepper, nutmeg, grated bread, and yolks of eggs.

  2. Stick cloves into the stuffed leg.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. When half done, cut off bits from the fleshy end and place them in a pot with oysters, liquor, salt, mace, and hot water.

  2. Stew until half the liquid is gone.

  3. Add butter rolled in flour, shake together, and pour the sauce over the mutton when done.

Serve

  1. Serve with plain 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the rich, savory meat flavor.
Mutton suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffed meat moist and tender as it cooks.
Grated bread
Absorbs juices and fat, giving the stuffing body and a softer texture.
Yolks of eggs
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape when cooked.
Oysters
Give the sauce a briny, savory flavor and a delicate, saline depth.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, thickens it into a smooth, glossy liquid.

The step that matters

Add butter rolled in flour. Flour must be fully worked into the butter and the sauce kept moving, or it will clump. Floured butter whisked into simmering liquid thickens smoothly only when it is evenly dispersed.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, nutmeg, bread, egg, clove, oyster):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, nutmeg, bread, egg, clove, oyster. 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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