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Gigot Roti a LA Provencale

A roast leg of mutton marinated with oil, onion, parsley, garlic, salt, and pepper, cooked over a fire.

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 chopped onion 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.

  2. Reduce the heat and baste often, serving 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy when roasted slowly after beating and marinating.
Oil
Carries the flavour of the onion and herbs into the meat and helps keep the surface moist during roasting.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the marinade that penetrates the meat.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the marinade.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that spreads gently through the meat as it roasts.

The step that matters

Basting after reducing the heat. Once the heat is lowered, frequent basting keeps the surface moist so the meat does not dry out while it finishes cooking and the juices form the gravy.

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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