Why it works: Mutton and turkey work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 75 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Prepare the mutton
Remove the bone from the leg of mutton.
Fill the boneless leg with turkey stuffing and tie the meat into shape.
Braise
Place the mutton in a stewing pan and add enough broth to half cover it.
Add brandy, onions, carrot, herbs, peppercorns, parsley, garlic, and mace.
Set the pan on the fire and let it stew slowly, avoiding boiling.
Once cooked, strain the sauce and thicken it by stirring in red currant jelly, anchovy vinegar, and port.
Serve
Serve the mutton garnished with fried turkey forcemeat balls and pour the gravy around it.
Accompany with haricots verts and mashed potatoes.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Mutton + turkeytop 7% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together75 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together8,053 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together29,030 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together9,294 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together21,599 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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 meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
- Red currant jelly
- Adds sweetness and body to the strained sauce as it thickens.
- Anchovy vinegar
- Adds acidity and savoury depth that balances the rich sauce.
- Port
- Adds sweetness and aroma to the gravy.
- Broth
- Provides moisture and flavour as the meat braises.
The step that matters
Stew slowly without boiling. A gentle simmer keeps the connective tissue in the mutton breaking down into tender meat, while a rolling boil toughens the muscle fibres and can make the sauce cloudy and greasy.
Flavor stand-ins for the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turkey, brandy, onion, carrot, parsley, garlic):
- Thymebetter flavor fit
- Celerybetter flavor fit
- Pepperbetter flavor fit
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turkey, brandy, onion, carrot, parsley, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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