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Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton served with mashed turnips, carrots, and a caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the mutton

  1. Place the trimmed leg of mutton in a large pot and cover it with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Add a handful of coarse sea salt, carrots, turnips, and parsnips.

  4. Boil for about 2.5 hours until the mutton is cooked.

Prepare and serve

  1. Garnish with mashed turnips mixed with flour, butter, cream, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Mold the mashed turnips into large egg shapes and arrange them in a circular row around the dish.

  3. Place boiled carrot pieces between the turnips.

  4. Dish up the mutton with a paper ruffle on the shank bone.

  5. Pour gravy under the mutton and serve with caper sauce on the side.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsnip + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main cooked meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Flour
Thickens the mashed turnip garnish so it holds its molded shape.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture to the mashed turnip garnish.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed turnips.
Turnips
Provide mild sweetness and a soft, mashable texture once boiled.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam after boiling begins. Foam contains coagulated proteins and impurities that can cloud the cooking liquid and give the broth an unclean flavor if left in.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, parsnip, flour, butter, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, parsnip, flour, butter, cream. 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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