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Leg of Mutton Boned and Forced

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Boned and Forced

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Lay the mutton joint skin-side up on a clean cloth.

  2. Cut through the skin from the knuckle to the first joint, lifting it from the flesh along the bone.

  3. Cut down to the bone and work the knife around it until you reach the socket.

  4. Remove the flat bone from the large end and loosen the skin around the remaining bone.

  5. Fill the cavities with forcemeat, adding seasoning of eschalot, garlic, or onion.

  6. Chop the inside of the mutton with bacon, parsley, thyme, savory, pepper, mace, salt, nutmeg, and lemon rind or eschalots.

  7. Sew the skin neatly together and tie the knuckle tightly to prevent the escape of juices.

  8. Replace the flat bone at the large end.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, thyme, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, thyme, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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