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Braised Leg of Mutton

A braised leg of mutton cooked slowly with bacon, onions, carrots, herbs, and bones.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Braised Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of mutton up to the first joint.

  2. Roll strips of bacon in mixed spice and minced savoury herbs.

  3. Lard the inside of the boned leg with the bacon strips or fill with forcemeat.

  4. Sew up the meat and place it in a braising pan.

Braise

  1. Add slices of bacon under and over the meat, along with onions, carrots, bay leaves, savoury herbs, and bones or bits of meat.

  2. Cook slowly for 4 hours or until tender.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Garlic + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,930 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist through slow braising.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the lean meat as it renders during the long cook.
Forcemeat
Fills the boned cavity with highly seasoned stuffing that flavours the meat from within.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness in the braising liquid as they soften and caramelise.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the braising liquid and vegetables.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 4 hours or until tender. Lean meat from a large cut only becomes tender when collagen slowly breaks down into gelatin at low, steady heat. Cooking too fast or too hot toughens the muscle fibres and dries the surface, so the braise should simmer gently and stay covered with liquid.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, garlic, onion. 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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