Skip to main content
Main

Receipt for Cooking a Leg of Mutton

A roasted leg of mutton seasoned with celery, gherkins, tarragon, salt, pepper, and shallot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Receipt for Cooking a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ask the butcher to remove the skin from the leg of mutton, leaving it near the knuckle.

  2. Lard the leg with pieces of celery, gherkins cut like lardoons, and boiled tarragon.

  3. Sprinkle the filling with salt, pepper, and finely chopped shallot.

  4. Replace the skin from the knuckle downwards and secure it with sewing and string.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the leg as usual, then remove the stitches and string before serving it 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. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Celery + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Celery + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together459 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 body of the dish and carries the flavour and juices during roasting.
Celery
Adds a crisp, aromatic note that contrasts with the rich, tender meat.
Gherkins
Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the mutton.
Tarragon
Contributes a distinct aniseed aroma to the meat.

The step that matters

Replace the skin from the knuckle downwards and secure it with sewing and string.. The skin must cover the lardoned filling evenly so it stays enclosed while roasting. Loose or gapped skin lets the filling dry out or fall away from the meat.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tarragon, pepper, shallot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tarragon, pepper, shallot. 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.

More roasted leg of mutton recipes

with Garlic 3 See all 55 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes