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To Boil a Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton served with turnips and a caper butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leg

  1. Keep the leg of mutton for 4 to 5 days before boiling.

  2. Bend the shank and cut the tendon at the joint if necessary to shorten the leg.

Boil

  1. Boil the leg in water for 2 hours over low heat.

  2. Do not wrap the leg in cloth, as it will spoil the broth.

  3. Do not boil vegetables with the mutton to avoid flavoring the meat.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare a sauce with finely chopped capers mixed into melted butter.

  2. Serve the leg with some of the cooking liquid, placing the lower side up for carving.

  3. Serve with mashed or whole turnips.

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. Capers + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Melts into the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Capers
Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the meat and butter.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and a soft texture when mashed or served whole.

The step that matters

Boil over low heat, without wrapping the leg or boiling vegetables with it. Gentle low-heat simmering keeps the meat tender and the broth clear; a hard boil toughens muscle fibres and cloudy broth results. Keeping cloth and vegetables out protects the flavour of the meat and the broth.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, capers, butter. 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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