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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: Thyme and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Boned and Forced

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Select a tender joint of mutton and lay it skin-side down on a clean cloth.

  2. Use a sharp boning knife to cut through the skin from the knuckle to the first joint.

  3. Carefully raise the skin from the flesh along the bone, cutting down to the bone.

  4. Work the knife around the bone until you reach the socket, then remove the flat bone.

  5. Loosen the skin around the middle joint and draw out the two bones without dividing them.

  6. Prepare the forcemeat by chopping the mutton removed from the bone with bacon, parsley, thyme, winter savory, pepper, mace, salt, nutmeg, and lemon rind or eschalots.

  7. Fill the cavities of the leg with the forcemeat and sew the skin together where it was cut.

  8. Tie the knuckle tightly to prevent gravy from escaping.

  9. 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. Thyme + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Winter savory + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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, winter savory, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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