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Mayonnaise with Cold Leg of Mutton

A cold leg of mutton served with a golden mayonnaise sauce and garnished with lettuce, aspic jelly, gherkins, olives, capers, anchovy fillets, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mayonnaise with Cold Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Prepare a thick mayonnaise sauce until it reaches a golden yellow color.

Assemble the dish

  1. Slice the cold leg of mutton and arrange it in a dish.

  2. Drizzle a few drops of tarragon vinegar over the mutton and sprinkle with black pepper.

  3. Place well-dried lettuce leaves over the mayonnaise.

  4. Garnish with aspic jelly, gherkins, olives, capers, anchovy fillets, butter balls, and whole hard-boiled egg yolks.

  5. Chill the sauce and pour it over the garnished dish.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise (in the method)
Forms the creamy, rich sauce that coats the sliced mutton and garnishes.
Cold leg of mutton
Provides the main meat, served sliced and cold as the centrepiece.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, crumbly texture as a garnish.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds a sharp, aromatic acidity that brightens the rich meat and sauce.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, vinegar, pepper, lettuce, olive, capers, anchovy):

  1. Tarragonthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, vinegar, pepper, lettuce, olive, capers, anchovy. 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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