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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton boiled briefly, then simmered, served with butter, flour, milk, salt, pepper, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to a boil.

  2. If the mutton is freshly killed, beat it with a rolling pin to soften the fibers; otherwise, let it hang for a week if possible.

Boil and simmer

  1. Plunge the meat into the boiling water and let it boil for one minute.

  2. Remove the saucepan from the heat, cover it tightly, and let it simmer slowly.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
The main meat; slow, gentle cooking softens its connective tissue for tenderness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded flavor.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after the brief boil. Once the meat has boiled for a minute, keeping the heat low and the pot covered lets connective tissue break down gradually. A hard, rolling boil tightens the muscle fibers and leaves the meat stringy and tough.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, milk, 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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