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Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton cooked with carrots, turnips, and parsnips, served with a creamy turnip garnish and caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Cook the mutton

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

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  3. Add salt, carrots, turnips, and parsnips.

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

Make the garnish

  1. For the garnish, mix mashed turnips with flour, butter, cream, nutmeg, and pepper.

  2. Shape the mashed turnips into large egg shapes using two tablespoons.

Plate and serve

  1. Arrange the turnip shapes in a circular row around the dish.

  2. Place boiled carrot pieces between the turnip shapes.

  3. 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

Leg of mutton
Provides the main cut of meat that is slowly boiled until cooked through.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the plate once boiled.
Turnips
Mashed and mixed with flour and cream to form the soft, binding garnish shapes.
Parsnips
Add mild sweetness to the boiled vegetables that flavor the pot.
Flour
Thickens the mashed turnip mixture so the shapes hold together.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed turnip garnish.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while bringing the water to a boil. Foam contains impurities that cloud the cooking liquid and can give the broth an off flavor. Removing it early keeps the gravy and broth clear and clean-tasting.

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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