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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton served with caper sauce and mashed turnips, carrots, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Boil the leg of mutton until tender.

  2. Prepare caper sauce to serve with the mutton.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and boil turnips, carrots, and potatoes until soft.

  2. Mash the turnips and serve alongside the mutton and vegetables.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 protein, which becomes tender through long gentle boiling.
Potatoes
Starchy vegetable that softens when boiled and adds bulk to the plate.
Turnips
Become soft and mashable when boiled, giving the dish a mild, earthy sweetness.
Carrots
Soften when boiled and add natural sweetness to the vegetables.

The step that matters

Boil the leg of mutton until tender. Large cuts of meat need a long, gentle simmer so collagen breaks down and the meat becomes tender. Boiling too hard can toughen the outer fibers and leave the centre undercooked, so keep the water at a steady simmer.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sauce, turnip, carrot):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sauce, turnip, carrot. 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.

More boiled mutton recipes

Leg 48with Caper Sauce 14Neck 12Shoulder 9Breast 7Shoulder with Oysters 7 See all 59 →

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